


Joseph Campbell, Eat Your Heart Out

by shadowen



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action & Romance, Action/Adventure, Deaf Clint, Fairy Tales, Genderswap, Hero's Journey, M/M, Road Trips, Romance, big gay awakening, epic tropes, folk lore, mild violence, unapologetic invocation of Joseph Campbell, with a brief appearance by Clea and Stephen Strange
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 14:25:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1045010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowen/pseuds/shadowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint's not your average fairy tale hero, but this isn't your average fairy tale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which a change occurs, and the truth is hidden.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting in my unfinished folder for over a year, but now it's finished! So, here, have some epic tropes and romance.

Clint did not want to open his eyes. The edges of color creeping in behind his lids told him that the light shining on his face was entirely too bright. The familiar feel of thin, stiff sheets against his skin suggested that he was almost certainly in a bed in medical, which was never a good thing. There was no sound, not even the ambient hum of silence, and he was missing the slight touch of his hearing aids in his ears, which the doctors only took away when he had well and truly fucked himself up.

He had been here so many times before, waking up on his back in a hospital bed, and he knew that whatever he found on the other side of his closed eyes was not going to be pleasant.

Sure enough, the fluorescent light was merciless, and he had to blink away flashes of white before he could make out the ceiling above him. Acoustic tile, seams visible, standard ventilation. So he was in the Cuts and Bruises ward, not the We Don’t Know What’s Wrong but it’s Not Good ward. That, at least, was encouraging.

There was movement beside him, and he turned to find Coulson keeping watch, looking at him with an unreadable expression. Granted, most of Coulson’s expressions were unreadable to anyone else, but this one was especially careful.

He crooked a finger over his ear, and Coulson handed him his hearing aids, waiting until he had them in place to ask, “How do you feel?”

Clint shifted, testing muscles and motion, and frowned. Aside from an ache in his head, nothing hurt, but everything felt... off, like he’d been taken apart and put back together with all his pieces in a different order.

“Weird,” he answered, and his voice sounded strange, like it was coming from a different place in his mouth. “What happened?”

Coulson cleared his throat. “After you went down, Loki ran for it. Thor and Stark chased him halfway to Alaska before they lost the trail. We think...,” Coulson paused. “We think he knew he’d lost his advantage and wanted to get in one more shot. So he went for you.”

“Of course he did.” Clint let his head slump back on the pillow. The bright lights glared down at him, unsympathetic to his aching head, unfeeling for the memory of an icy voice telling him, _You have heart_. “That son of a bitch has it in for me, I swear to god.”

“There does seem to be some... preoccupation, there,” Coulson agreed. He sounded tired, and Clint wondered how long he’d been out, how long Coulson had been waiting for him to wake up.

“I remember getting hit in the face with something. Felt like... I don’t know, like warm water, but it wasn’t wet.” Mostly, he remembered Loki’s smile, cruel and cutting and the kind of crazy that left cities razed in its wake. He remembered meeting Loki’s eyes and thinking nothing but, _Please, god, not again_. “Some kind of energy weapon?”

Coulson cleared his throat again, and Clint was starting to worry that this might actually be a We Don’t Know What’s Wrong but it’s Not Good situation. “Stark was able to get a reading on the pulse. He and Doctor Banner are going over it, now, but they think.... At least, the initial conclusion, supported by Thor’s opinion and what we know about Loki’s tactics, is that it was a, uh, a spell.”

Clint blinked. “A spell.”

“A magic spell, yes.”

“I got hit. In the face. With a magic spell.”

“That would appear to be the case, yes.” Coulson at least did him the favor of looking him in the eye.

Clint could deal with a level of weirdness that would send most people screaming into a straight jacket. He could deal with pain and guilt and betrayal and alien hoards pouring out of a rip in the sky. He could stare down the barrel of his own mortality and never so much as flinch. Magic, though. Magic was not something he was equipped to handle, and he didn’t figure SHIELD was, either. He swallowed. “So how long have I got?”

Coulson frowned. “What do you mean?”

“This thing, this spell Loki hit me with,” he said. “What’s it doing, and how long’s it gonna take to kill me?”

“It’s not....” Coulson rolled his shoulders, resettling them under his sleek jacket. “There have been certain... dramatic biological changes, but there doesn’t seem to be any instability or deterioration.” He gave Clint a small smile colored with relief. “You are not, thankfully, dying.”

Clint didn’t let himself share in that relief. He was all too aware that, sometimes, living was worse. “Okay, so what did that bastard do to me?”

Coulson’s eyes were fixed on Clint’s. No, not just fixed: stubbornly refusing to move anywhere else. Clint looked down at himself, suddenly afraid to find that important pieces were missing or maimed, and he discovered, very quickly, why everything felt so strange.

“Son of a bitch.”

He lifted up the neck of his hospital gown and stared down at his chest, ignoring the awkward blush that had appeared on Coulson’s face. Yes, those were definitely breasts. Not especially large ones, thank god, and what bizarre life choices had he made that led him to a moment where that was something he was grateful for?

“Son of a _bitch_.”

He lifted the white sheet, hiking up the bottom of the gown until he could see that, yes, the spell had been pretty thorough, and he was beginning to understand what Coulson meant by _biological changes._

He looked up to find Coulson regarding him warily. “Son of a bitch,” he repeated.

“That... does seem to be the general consensus,” Coulson agreed. “I should warn you, though. Stark seems, uh, inappropriately amused by the whole thing.”

“Yeah, big shock.” Clint peered under the hospital gown again, then back to Coulson. “Organs? Genetics?”

Coulson let out a breath that sounded suspiciously like a sigh of relief. “Both have been altered in a way consistent with the external changes, without affecting any of your non-sex characteristics.”

“So basically, I now have a uterus and an x-chromosome and y’know... things,” Clint said. “But my appendix hasn’t grown back, and I’ve still got all the same old scars.”

“Basically.”

Clint looked down again, his head somehow aching even worse than before. When his eyes came back up, Coulson’s expression had closed down again, carefully empty and calm. Clint scowled. “Loki is a dick.”

“Yes,” Coulson agreed, and there was, at least, some feeling in his voice. “Yes, he is.”

***

After an awkward conversation about harassment and an argument about pronoun usage - “He, him, his, and fuck you, too. I’m still _me_.” - it turned out that Stark knew a guy.

The “guy” Stark knew lived in the city, but Stark flatly refused to go and see him on the grounds that the man had once called him a “soulless heathen” and forcibly expelled him, armor and all, off of a penthouse balcony. When Coulson expressed doubts about the wisdom and, more to the point, _safety_ of involving this individual. Stark had shrugged and said, “He’s an okay guy, he just can’t stand me”, which no one was surprised to hear.

So Coulson drove, and Clint sat hunched in the passenger seat, wearing Natasha’s jeans and one of his own sweatshirts and feeling generally awkward and unwieldy.

“You’re being unexpectedly calm about all of this,” Coulson remarked, and his face had that same carefully empty expression.

Clint laughed. “I don’t feel real calm,” he admitted. “Nothing moves right, nothing fits. I mean, everything’s there, I just.... I feel like my skin’s been stitched on wrong.”

Coulson gave him a searching look, and Clint smiled back wryly. In front of the others, he had to keep it together, pretend like he didn’t feel claustrophobic and caged inside a body that wasn’t really his. Even Natasha kept glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, like she was waiting for him to crack.

With Coulson, it was different. Coulson had seen him at his worst and never batted an eye, never flinched except to become a wall against all possible threats until Clint could get back to himself. This was bad, sure, but it wasn’t anywhere near the worst, and Clint felt a little safer with Coulson at the wheel.

“Honestly, sir?” he said. “I’m kinda freaking out a little.”

“I think that’s reasonable.” Coulson met Clint’s eyes for a second, then looked back to the road. “We’ll figure this out. I promise you that.”

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, sir.”

This time, when he met Clint’s gaze, he held it. “I don’t.”

The door Stark’s directions led them to was unremarkable, but Clint could see it, could see something off around the edges. Before they could knock, it opened to reveal a young woman with white hair and a sweet smile.

She greeted them warmly, ushering them down an impossibly long hallway and into a cluttered study, saying, “Stephen’s a little busy at the moment, but he should be right out. We only just found out you were coming.” She smiled kindly at Clint. “Gender-bending spells are such a nuisance. How are you holding up?”

Clint blinked. “I, uh, I’m alright. Thanks.”

She patted his arm gently, and Clint had the distinct impression that she didn’t believe him for a second. “Can I get you boys, anything? Tea? Cookies?”

She provided them with both, despite protests that no, really, they were fine, thanks, and it was the better part of an hour before a tall, thin man appeared, his wild black hair streaked with white and his brow knitted in thought. When he caught sight of Clint, his narrow face twisted into a scowl of disgust. “Oh. It’s you.”

It wasn’t exactly an uncommon reaction to Clint, but he didn’t usually get it from people he’d never met. “Um, hi?”

Coulson stood, every inch the professional g-man. “Doctor Strange, I’m Agent Phil Coulson with SHIELD. This is Agent Clint Barton. As it seems you’re already aware, we have a bit of a situation.”

Strange rolled his eyes and proceeded to pour himself a very large mug of tea. “No, a _situation_ is a lunatic with delusions of grandeur attempting to open a gateway to another universe in pursuit of some harebrained notion of destiny and purpose.” He glanced at Clint with disdain. “What you have, Agent Whoever-You-Are, is a minor annoyance.”

“Then it shouldn’t be too hard to fix,” Clint snapped. “Since it’s so _minor_.”

Coulson was frowning. “Doctor, I know this may not be an interdimensional disaster, but I th-”

“Do you have any idea how many assholes come to me wailing because they suddenly have bosoms?” Strange cut him off, glaring at Clint. “So what was it? Did you rape a priestess? Cheat on a witch’s daughter? What did you do to get this particular wrench in your works?”

“I pissed off the Norse god of chaos. Who’s a dick, by the way.” Clint had had just about enough of this guy. “Can you fix me or not?”

Strange scoffed. “ _Fix_ you? Are you broken, agent? Does being a woman make you broken?”

“What? No. I just....” Clint spread his arms and gestured toward the body he was in. “This isn’t _me_.”

Something passed over Strange’s narrow face, and his scowl vanished. “No,” he agreed quietly. “It isn’t, is it?” He stepped closer, studying Clint intently, searching for something. “You said Loki did this to you?”

_Among other things._ “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s got a grudge? Because he likes fucking with me?” Clint shifted in his seat, knowing full well that there was no way to get comfortable, not in this skin. “How the fuck should I know? The guy is untold levels of batshit.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, there.” Strange sat in the chair beside him and snatched up Clint’s hand. Coulson tensed, like he was fighting the impulse to reach for his gun, but he relaxed by a fraction when Clint gave him a nod. Strange ran the tips of his fingers over Clint’s palm, mapping out the lines and calluses. “Interesting.”

Clint looked back at Coulson in disbelief. “You heard that right? That actually just happened?”

“You have a killer’s hands,” Strange said, and Clint wouldn’t let himself flinch away from that. The change had made his hands smaller, but all the marks he had made in them remained, telling a terrible story for anyone who could read it. “There’s more, though. Not just death.”

Strange reached up to grasp Clint’s jaw in his unexpectedly strong grip. Coulson really did put a hand on his gun, then. “It’s okay, boss,” Clint assured him, and he really hoped it was.

“Shut up,” Strange commanded, his dark eyes punching through Clint’s like sharp blades.

Clint could feel the pressure in his head, could feel the touch on his thoughts as Strange moved through them with purpose. The sensation brushed across the place in Clint’s mind that was _Loki_ and there it was, the splash of magic on his face, waking up with Coulson watching him and his world upended, waking up with Natasha watching him and the planet on the brink, Loki’s smile, Clint’s rage and fear, blue ice and red blood and guilt because they were dead and Coulson was dead and there was something in his head that wasn’t him and no no no _NO_.

Clint wrenched away from Strange’s grasp, heart pounding. He bent over, trying to breathe, trying to shut away the freezing shadows that he would not allow to overwhelm him. There was a warm presence at his head, and he looked to find Coulson crouched down in front of him, careful expression wiped away by fear.

“Clint?”

Clint swallowed, nodded. “Fine,” he said. “I’m fine.”

Coulson laid a steadying hand on his arm and turned on Strange, his voice low and dangerous. “What did you do?”

“I looked,” Strange replied. “I read. Nothing more.”

“Looked at what?” Coulson’s eyes came back to Clint. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Clint said, because he didn’t talk about Loki, about the nightmares that woke him shivering in the dark. “It’s fine. I just... freaked out. It’s fine.”

Coulson frowned, but he kept his hand on Clint’s arm and said firmly, “We’re done here.”

“Yes, you are.” Strange regarded Clint with sympathy and a certain degree of interest. “I can’t help you, Agent Barton. I’m sorry. But I can try to point you in the right direction.” His eyes flickered to Coulson, and he went on. “Typically, enchantments like this can’t be lifted, not by force. I’m afraid it’s up to you to get yourself back to... normal.”

Clint nodded. “Okay. So what do I do?”

“I have no idea.”

Coulson rolled his eyes. “Thank you, doctor. Sorry for wasting your time.” He stood, and Clint stood with him, unsteady but for the press of Coulson’s fingers on his arm.

“I don’t know why the enchantment has taken this form or what it’s intended to reveal,” Strange said, “but I believe it will be reversed by the acceptance of some truth you’ve been keeping from yourself.”

Clint blinked. “Seriously?”

“Transformations are meant to reveal an internal nature by subverting the external, and tricksters are fond of using truth to sow discord.” Strange gave him a thin smile. “So that’s my professional opinion. The rest is up to you.”

Clint turned to Coulson, whose expression was so calm, so careful, except for the hard corners of his mouth. “Guess I’d better start shopping for bras, then,” he said, trying for a light tone and falling flat. The lines around Coulson’s mouth, deepened.

“I’m not so sure about that,” Strange told him. “If I read you right, then I’m certain you’ll find the answer in your own way and in your own time.”

“Well, thanks for the vote of confidence.” He held out a hand, and Strange shook it in his strong grip.

“You’re very welcome. Now get the hell out of my house.”

Once they were out of Strange’s impossible home and back in the hallway of the building, Coulson took Clint by the shoulders and faced him dead on. “I’m going to ask you one more time, and do not lie to me. Are you alright?”

It was the same measured voice he used when Clint got hit in the head and he was worried about concussions and brain damage. “Not really,” Clint answered honestly, “but I will be, and I don’t wanna talk about it.”

Coulson held his gaze for a second, then nodded, and that was it. It always was. He knew when to push and when to back off, and that was one of the reasons Clint had stuck with him so long.

“If you do....”

Clint gave him half a smile. “I know where to find you.”

***

Clint couldn’t sleep.

No matter how he tossed and turned, his breasts, so unfamiliar and so _there_ , seemed to be in the way, weighing him down or crushed beneath him. The ache in his head, exacerbated by Strange’s searching, refused to go away.

He took his bow and quiver and padded through the dark tower to the training room and the shooting range Stark had built for him, his feet bare and silent.

The mechanics of shooting were the same as they had ever been. Nock, draw, release. But the art of it had changed. His muscles moved differently under his skin. His arms and shoulders met in the wrong place. He had to draw a dozen times before the movement felt anything like it was supposed to, and the string still snapped across his breast on release.

The arrow landed dead center on the target, though. So that was something.

Clint lost himself in it, in the calm repetition of the one motion that had defined his life, given him a name, a purpose, and a future. This was who he was. This he could do.

He’d been at it for over an hour when the room suddenly went cold, and his hearing aids gave a faint buzz of interference.

“Well, this _is_ interesting.”

It was the voice in his nightmares, the voice that echoed in his head like glaciers splitting. He drew as he turned, leveling an arrow right at Loki’s bright green eye.

“To be perfectly honest, I was rather expecting some sort of bird.” Loki was wearing that sleek black suit, and Clint wondered if that was for his benefit, a reminder of the crimes he had committed under Loki’s control. “But this sort of magic does have a mind of its own, I suppose.”

Clint swallowed back the bile and deep, primal terror that rose up in his throat. “What does that mean?” he demanded. “You _asshole_. You did this to me, and you didn’t even know what would happen?”

Loki frowned, and some instinct that had held on tight in Clint’s head quailed. _Don’t question. Don’t resist. Do well, and your master will love you._

“The shape of your transformation is of your own making, you petulant child. I merely provided the impetus.” Loki took a step forward, and Clint pulled his string back another inch. “It is a form tied to the desire that lives deepest in the dark places of your heart. I had no idea you so longed to become a plain-faced girl with no shape to speak of. Was it not enough to be a cretinous boar? Are you so desperate to remain unloved that you must become even less desirable?”

He would not let Loki shame him, wouldn’t let the truth of the words burrow down into his mind. If he was going down tonight, he’d do it with his bow drawn and his pride intact.

And Clint knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, if Loki chose that moment to kill him, he was going to die. Period.  
.  
“What do you want?”

“The same thing I have always wanted.” Loki’s grin was sharp and feral, and he kept moving slowly closer. “Victory. Power. To claim the destiny that has been stolen from me.”

“Well, at least you’re honest about it.” Clint wondered if Jarvis was watching, if the others had been alerted, if this was even happening at all.

Loki spread his hands, a vicious parody of a peaceful gesture. “I have no need to lie. You know what I want, Agent Barton, and you’re going to help me get it, just as you were meant to do.”

Clint couldn’t help it; he laughed. “Seriously? You got another magic stick tucked up your sleeve somewhere?”

Loki just kept smiling and moving closer. “I was hoping to avoid such heavy-handed measures. Perhaps we might... negotiate?”

“Hmm. Let me think about that. Yeah, y’know, the annihilation of the human race just doesn’t seem like a fair trade to get my dick back,” Clint said. “If I had it, of course, I’d tell you to suck it, but how about you just lick my brand new pussy and go straight the fuck to hell.”

Clint blinked, and Loki vanished. Long, cold fingers wrapped around Clint’s throat, and a slight hand held him from behind by his waist. _Not again. Not again._

“The next words from your tongue will be assent,” Loki commanded, his breath like winter wind against Clint’s ear. “Refuse me again, and I shall drag you broken from this room and make you watch every other living soul in this place drown in their own blood. First it will be my brother, so weak for all his strength, then your precious captain, then that wretched Stark and his little whore. Last of all will be those two dearest to your black heart. I will bathe you in blood as red as her hair and clothe you in a suit made of his skin. Then I will call forth the thing that dwells inside the gentle Doctor Banner and trap you in this tower with no companions for the rest of your days but that howling monster and the corpses of those you love.”

He could see it, could see the blood and bodies as clearly as if Loki held them before his eyes. The grip around his throat was light, almost gentle, but Clint felt like he was choking.

“Acquiesce. Do as I ask, and I will spare them,” Loki went on. “What I seek will allow me to leave this world and find another realm to rule. I will travel far across the stars, and you need never dream of me again.” His words were soft and silver, sweet on Clint’s ear, and Clint remembered old stories where Loki’s lips were sealed to stop him spinning his spells. “I can return you to your preferred state. It is a simple thing, and I will do it gladly.”

It was a trick, a lie, a poisoned carrot, and Clint wanted with all his being to tell Loki to fuck off. But he could almost feel the gory weight of Coulson’s flayed skin across his shoulders, a warning and a promise. If Clint refused, then he would watch his friends die. Loki was a liar, but he didn’t bluff.

“Will you help me, Clinton?” Loki asked. “Will you follow me?”

Slowly, shutting his eyes against the railing of his instincts, Clint swallowed hard and nodded.

“Say it,” Loki ordered.

“Yes.”

“ _Swear_ it.”

“I swear. Fuck you. I swear I’ll do what you want.” Clint’s heart pounded, and he wished it would just stop beating altogether and save him from this. “On my life, I swear.”

“You can do better than that,” Loki hissed. “Swear to me on something that you actually value.”

Well, he had Clint there. “On my honor.”

Loki laughed.

“On my bow.”

“Your little toy?” The grip at his waist tightened. “Try again.”

“On their lives,” Clint said, out of options. “My friends’. On Natasha’s life. On Coulson’s.”

“A paltry oath, but it will do.” Loki’s thin lips brushed his ear. “Since they are what you treasure most, these heroes you call friends, take one thing of worth from each of them. Bearing only these things, travel north in three days’ time, and I will set you to your task. Don’t disappoint me, Clinton.”

The hands holding him vanished, and Clint didn’t realize he’d fallen to his knees until he felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. He reacted on instinct and nearly snapped Stark’s arm in half.

“Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t....”

Stark just waved him off, shaking out the offended arm. “Pretty sure that one’s my fault, sneaking up on a super spy. You okay?”

“I’m....” _About to betray you, steal from you, and put myself in the hands of my worst nightmare, probably for nothing._ “I’m fine.”

“Yeah, that’s a load of crap.” Stark sat down beside him and fixed Clint with a sharp stare. “Jarvis gave me an alert. Said you were aiming at nothing, talking to yourself, generally freaking out. Which, honestly, kind of freaks me out. I mean, I like you. I don’t wanna have to take you down if you go all crazy, mind-wiped on us. Especially now that you’re a girl. So you can tell me what’s up and we’ll figure it out, or I can go get Agent Babysitter and we can have a little late-night pow wow. It’s up to you, Hawk.”

The other SHIELD agents called him that as a joke, mocking him. From Stark, it sounded like a genuine endearment.

Clint took a deep breath. “Loki was here.”

Stark’s expression froze for one, long second, then he said, “Jarvis, wake up the rest of the team. Tell them we have a s-”

“No.” Clint couldn’t face the rest of them, not now. Stark, at least, might understand what he’d agreed to do. “No, I just.... He was here for me. He wanted me to help him. I said yes. I had to.”

“Okay, okay. Here’s what we’re gonna do.” Stark put his hands on Clint’s shoulder, steady and reassuring. “First, we’re gonna go upstairs and get you a drink, because you look like shit. Then you’re going to tell me what the hell just happened.”

***

Clint left out the details of Loki’s threats, but Stark got the picture.

“You should tell the others.”

“No.”

“Barton, I d-”

“ _No._ ” Clint ran a hand over his face. His hands were too small, his face too thin. His whole body was wrong, and his whole being rattled in the aftermath of Loki’s touch. “Look, Loki’s playing me. I know that. One way or another, this thing’s gonna go sideways, and I don’t.... If I don’t come back, I don’t want them to know the truth.”

“What truth? That you threw yourself under the bus to save the rest of us?” Stark snorted. “At least tell Romanov. Or Coulson.”

“ _Especially_ not Coulson.” Clint had been a disappointment to a lot of bad men. He wasn’t going to be one to the best he’d ever known. Besides, Coulson would probably sedate and restrain Clint and just go himself, anyway. “I need a plan C.”

“Oh, I’ve got a plan C,” Stark said, “but I’m not sure how you’re gonna feel about it.”

How Clint felt about it, as it turned out, was not very good, but it was better than plan A, which was stealing what he needed and disappearing in the middle of the night.

“I’m sorry, you had a... vision?” It had sounded ridiculous the first time Stark said it. Now, coming from Rogers, it sounded like the bold-faced lie that it was.

“I know it’s nuts,” Clint said. They were all looking at him, watching, waiting for the moment when this insane plan would start to make sense. He couldn’t look any of them in the eye. “It’s the only way. And I can’t explain how I know, but I do. You’ve gotta trust me.”

“Strange must’ve knocked something loose poking around in your head,” Stark put in, and Clint was glad, at least, to have him on his side in this. “Hey! Maybe you’ll get psychic powers. People can grow those, right? Not mind-reading, because that would end badly for everyone. But maybe a little clairvoyance. That could be useful.”

“I’m not psychic, you asshole. I’m just....” _Cursed._ “The point is, I can fix this. I can get back to normal.”

“Alone,” Natasha clarified. Her face was impassive, and he knew she didn’t buy any of this for a second.

Clint nodded and didn’t look at Coulson, who was staring at him with that same careful expression, like he’d been dealt the world’s worst hand and was masking his tell.

“But you need something from us? Something valuable?” Bruce was turning a pencil in his fingers, a nervous tic he’d picked up from Stark. He was worried about something, Clint thought, probably the prospect of putting anything of worth in Clint’s clumsy hands.

“Yeah, I don’t get that part,” Rogers said. “We’re supposed to give you, what? Good luck charms?”

“Tokens,” Coulson corrected, and Clint did look at him, then. “It’s common, in folklore, for a hero to be given items of power before undertaking a particular task, usually things he has to use to complete his quest.”

Stark raised a hand and addressed the room at large. “Everyone else heard that, right? Agent grumpy face just used the word ‘quest’ unironically in actual conversation.”

“The Son of Coul speaks truly,” Thor boomed. “With such a show of faith, a hero may go into battle unattended but never alone.” He placed one massive hand on Clint’s shoulder. “Ask whatever aid of me you will. All that is in my possession, I pledge to you.”

Clint gaped. Up to that point, his plan hadn’t gotten far past convincing the team he wasn’t crazy and hiding how petrified he was of facing Loki again. He’d never even thought of what objects he had to take, much less what he would ask for that was freely offered.

“Oh man, the hammer,” Stark chimed in. “Please, Barton. Ask for the hammer. I wanna see this.”

Thor insisted no mortal could lift Mjolnir, and, even so, Clint could never be worthy. “No. I, uh.... Crap, buddy, I don’t know. I don’t guess you’ve got any magic swords lying around?”

Thor beamed brightly. “As it happens, my friend, I do.”


	2. In which gifts are offered and accepted, reluctantly.

Clint had seen enough swords to know the difference between a pawn shop prop and a real weapon, but the blade in Thor’s hands was in an entirely different class. Clint gaped at it, open-mouth, maybe even drooled a little, but he didn’t think anyone could blame him. That was an actual, honest-to-fuck _magic sword_ , and it was _gorgeous_.

“This is the blade called Gram,” Thor intoned solemnly. “Forged by Wayland and wielded by Sigmund. Shattered by the hand of Odin and remade by Regin with an edge so keen that it sliced an anvil in twain. In Sigurd’s hand, it pierced the heart of the great dragon, Fafnir, and was then laid aside in honor. In the tongue of old Midgard, its name means ‘wrath’, and so it remains sharp as the righteous fury of heaven.”

Clint stared at his reflection, cast back at him in fragments by the shining blade. “Wow.”

Thor grinned. “I, Thor Odinson, bearer of great Mjolnir, do grant stewardship of mighty Gram to you, my battle kin, Barton the True, called Hawk-eyed, to fulfill the task before you and to bear in faith thereafter.”

“I....” Clint swallowed. “Thor, I can’t take this. This is.... I mean, it has a fucking _name_. This is supposed to be for legends and heroes and shit.”

“And so it passes to one of Midgard’s mightiest heroes, whose deeds will undoubtedly become legend,” Thor replied, still grinning. “It is a fine blade, my sharp-sighted friend. I am certain you shall find it worthy.”

“No, yeah. That’s not.... I mean, of course it is. It’s incredible.” Clint rubbed at the back of his head, his fingers itching to wrap around the sword’s smooth gold hilt, to try its weight and balance. “Just not sure I’m worthy of _it_.”

Thor narrowed his eyes. “Do you cast doubt upon my judgment, friend Barton?”

“What? No! I j-”

“It is unseemly to reject a gift that is given freely.”

“I’m not rejec-”

“Is the steel of Asgard displeasing to you?” He held Clint’s gaze, his expression stern, and Clint sighed.

“You really want me to have this?”

“I would not offer it if I did not,” Thor replied seriously.

“Well, how can I say no to that?” Clint held up his hands and watched with a touch of awe as Thor laid the hilt and blade across his open palms. The metal made his skin tingle with cold and... something else. He gripped the hilt and gave the sword a cautious, testing swing, sending it singing through the air.

It was heavy, but not as unwieldy as he’d expected. It felt sturdy and strong in his hand. It felt... right.

“Thank you,” he told Thor. “Really, man. Thank you.”

Thor’s bright grin returned, and he clapped Clint on the shoulder. “Wield it in good health, my friend, and may your enemies fall easily before you.”

Clint smiled back and really hoped he didn’t wind up having to slay a dragon.

***

Three days. Loki had given him three days, and, alone in the darkness of his room, a chill prickled on Clint’s neck, like he would never be rid of that freezing touch and the cold voice in his mind.

He wrapped the sword and its sheath in a strip of cloth and set it aside. _Gram_ , Thor had called it. _Wrath_. It was a legendary sword with a name, and a god had given it to Clint. He shook his head and refused to look too closely at that gift.

He wondered how Thor would feel if Clint ran that sword through Loki’s heart.

“ _Agent Barton?_ ” The sudden sound of Jarvis’s voice made Clint jump. “ _Doctor Banner has requested to speak with you. At your convenience, of course._ ”

“What? Yeah. Sure.” Clint rubbed at his eyes, pushing away thoughts of Loki and swords and fucking quests, wishing the ache in his head would stop. “I’m, uh.... Yeah. Tell him I’m on my way.”

Never, in Clint’s memory, had Banner ever asked to see him, but he smiled shyly when Clint appeared and waved him over to one of the cluttered lab tables.

“Sorry, sorry,” Banner said. “I know you’re busy getting ready for your.... Are we calling it a quest? Quest seems like a strange word.”

Clint winced. “Let’s just call it a mission, huh?”

Banner nodded, giving him another shy smile. “Mission. Right. Okay, so I won’t keep you long, but I wanted to run something past you and see if it’ll work for my, uh, contribution.”

“Oh.” Clint blinked. He was still reeling from Thor’s generosity, and he couldn’t imagine what Banner could have come up with. “Look, doc, you don’t have to go to any trouble. Just lend me your first aid kit, or something.”

The corner of Banner’s mouth shifted, turning his smile wry, and he glanced down at his feet. “Well, I thought about just letting the Other Guy offer his services, but I wasn’t sure how you’d feel about a giant, green bodyguard.” Clint snorted, and Banner met his eye for a second before busying himself with something on the lab table that Clint couldn’t have identified if his life depended on it. “And anyway, it’s no trouble. I’ve been working on this research for... well, for a long time. I’m glad it might finally do some good.”

The forumlae that appeared on Banner’s computer screen were long and complicated, but, to be fair, Clint felt that way about basic algebra, too. He did, however, recognize the double helix and letter strings of DNA sequencing.

“Yeah, you’re gonna have to translate that for me,” Clint said. “I don’t read science.”

“That’s okay, I don’t read.... Well, honestly, everything you can do is kind of foreign to me, so I guess we’re even.” Banner gestured to the screen. “This is a template for a serum that temporarily augments and optimizes targeted genetic structures within a subject. Basically....” He shifted his shoulders, and Clint caught a glimmer of genuine pride. “Basically, it’s a one-off super soldier serum.”

Clint’s jaw dropped. “You’re shitting me.”

Banner beamed. “Nope.”

“You....” Clint gaped at the screen. “You’re actually making this? For me?”

“It’s still experimental,” Banner told him quickly. “That is, the science is sound, but it hasn’t been tested. There’s an eight percent chance it won’t even work.”

Clint raised an eyebrow. “Is there any chance it’ll kill me?”

Banner shrugged. “Point oh seven percent? But there’s a ninety-one point nine three percent chance that it’ll give you all the benefits of being a super soldier for about twenty minutes to an hour.”

“I’ll take those odds,” Clint said. “There’s a big difference between twenty minutes and an hour, though.”

“It depends on what you do while the serum’s working,” Banner explained. “If you’re fighting or running or something like that, you’re going to burn through it faster. Otherwise, you can use it to keep you going when you’re running out of steam or to heal injuries, if you get hurt. Which, knowing you....”

“Yeah, yeah. We can’t all be invulnerable.”

“Once you’ve burned the serum out of your system, though, you’re going to crash hard,” Banner warned. “So make sure you’ve got somewhere safe to hole up for a little while.”

Somewhere safe, Clint thought. That was a laugh. “That’s pretty amazing, doc.”

Banner gave him a pleased smile. “Like I said, I’ve been working on it for a while. I just.... I mean of all the people that I think could use this for good, you’re definitely on the shortlist.” Clint absolutely did not blush at that, and Banner cleared his throat. “Anyway, if you think it’ll be useful....”

“Yeah,” Clint said quickly. “I mean, yes. Definitely.”

Banner nodded. “I’ll have Jarvis start synthesizing the serum. It might take a little while, but I wanted to check in and let you know I was working on it. Didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about you, or anything.”

Clint faltered. “That’s, uh.... Yeah, no. Thanks, doc. Thanks a lot.”

Banner waved him off, and Clint left feeling even more disoriented. His skin still sat wrong, his head still ached, and these extraordinary gifts had him spinning and uncertain. Maybe it would have been better if he hadn’t told them, if he’d had to steal what he needed, since what was being offered was so much more than he would have taken otherwise. As long as no one gave him something they couldn’t spare, he figured it was alright.

He found Coulson with Potts in the kitchen, the two of them talking intently over a pair of steaming mugs. Potts caught sight of him and smiled warmly. “Well, speak of the devil.”

Coulson sat up straight with a start, covering whatever emotion had been on his face with that same unreadable mask. Clint cleared his throat and forced a smile, going straight for the fresh pot of coffee on the counter. “Whatever he said about me is a lie,” he told Potts. “I’m charming and delightful and whatever it was wasn’t my fault.”

Coulson snorted. “You’ve got one in three right, at least.”

“Actually, Phil was just telling me about how you started working together,” Potts said, shooting Coulson a glance that Clint couldn’t quite decipher.

Clint hid his grimace behind his coffee cup. “You mean about how he got stuck with me? Yeah, that definitely wasn’t my fault.”

“No, of course not,” Coulson said mildly. “It couldn’t possibly be your fault that every other senior agent refused to work with you.”

“Buncha uptight philistines. No imagination. No style.” He raised his coffee respectfully toward Coulson. “You, sir. You’ve got style.”

Coulson returned the salute with his own cup, and Potts looked between them, grinning. “You seem well-matched,” she observed lightly, and Clint could have sworn she meant something else. Coulson gave her a look, but she ignored him and patted the seat next to her, gesturing for Clint to join them at the table.

He slid awkwardly into the chair, still unused to the changed proportions of his legs and the way his breasts preceded the rest of him, and feeling self-conscious under Potts’s strangely comfortable smile.

“How are you doing?” she asked with a sincerity Clint didn’t think most people were capable of.

He shrugged. “Fine. Y’know, weird, but fine.”

Her smile was kind and just a little bit wry. “It’s a different perspective, isn’t it?”

Clint couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Sure. Everything’s in a different place, nothing moves the way it’s supposed to, none of my clothes fit, and I’ve got... these.” He gestured at his breasts and looked to Potts helplessly. “Are they supposed to hurt? ‘Cause they kind of hurt.”

Coulson coughed and looked away, and Potts shot him a glare. “Oh, grow up.” To Clint, she asked, “Are you wearing a bra?”

He felt the blush flood his face, right up to his hairline. “Uh, no.”

Potts sat back and looked him over, considering. “I might have some things that will fit you. Are those Natasha’s pants?”

Clint looked down at the ill-fitting jeans. “Yes?”

“I thought so. Come on.” She stood gracefully, smoothing down her skirt. “If you have to go on a magic quest, you might as well be comfortable.”

Clint just stared at her, and Coulson chuckled. “A good general rule is to assume that Pepper is always right,” he told Clint. “You should probably just do what she says.”

“Um. Okay.” Clint rose from his seat just as awkwardly as he’d sat down and trailed dumbly after Potts as she led him down one level and into her personal apartment.

Everything about the space was flawless, as neatly and perfectly put-together as Potts herself, and Clint marveled at the luxurious warmth of it, all natural light and soft lines. Who she was and how she did all she did was a mystery to him, and, as close as she was to Coulson, Clint was embarrassed to admit that he made a habit of avoiding her for fear of coming off as... well, as himself.

“Sorry about the mess,” she said, and Clint was puzzled until he followed her into her bedroom, which, unlike the rest of the suite, was a disaster. Clothes were strewn across the unmade bed and collected in tiny piles on the floor. He spotted shoes from at least five different pairs, and a pink bra and pair of hose were draped over the back of a chair.

“Looks like mine,” he replied, shrugging. That was a lie; this was _much_ worse than Clint’s room.

Potts gave him a smile and crossed to a disorderly dresser in the corner, rifling through one of the overflowing drawers until she produced a rather involved-looking purple bra with a series of criss-crossing seams and a row of no-nonsense hooks down the front.

“Here,” she said, tossing it to him, “try this.”

It had more weight and structure than some body armor Clint had seen, and Clint wasn’t entirely sure how something like that was supposed to equate with comfort. He glanced up, but Potts was digging through another drawer, pulling out items and examining them with a look of concentration. He looked back down at the bra, sighing, and fumbled open the sturdy hooks.

He started to strip off his sweatshirt, paused, then figured to hell with it and yanked the thing over his head. It wasn’t as if Potts had never seen tits before, and Clint certainly wasn’t ashamed of his body, however foreign it might feel at the moment.

The bra fit snugly, covering and compressing his breasts in a way that was strangely comfortable, not constricting so much as redistributing their weight on his chest. The tension in his back lessened, and the faint ache around his nipples vanished. Clint stared down at the thing in astonishment.

“Well, how about that.”

Potts looked up and gave him a bright smile. “Better?”

“Much.” Clint gave himself an experimental prod in the boob. “So that’s what these things are for.”

“Among other things,” she said, laughing. She handed him a pair of black pants made out of something smooth and stretchy. “These might be a little tight, but they’re loose on me, so they should work alright.”

Clint gave the fabric an experimental tug. It was thicker than he expected, double-knit and obviously made for movement and durability. He didn’t need to look at the label inside the waistband, displaying a name that even he recognized, to know that this piece of clothing cost more than his entire wardrobe and probably as much as some of his tac gear.

“Are you...?” He faltered, holding the pants loosely in his hand. “I mean, this is really nice stuff, and it’s gonna get messed up if I wear it to, y’know, go do this thing. I don’t wanna borrow it and then not give it back.”

He did not add that there was a good chance neither he nor the clothes would be coming back, at all.

Potts shrugged, still smiling. “So keep it.”

“What? No. No, I can’t,” he said. He shook his head and held the pants out, trying to give them back to her. “I appreciate the gesture, Miz Potts, but I can’t. It’s too much.”

She rolled her eyes, and pushed the clothing back toward him. “It’s Pepper, and you can.” Instead of pulling away, she laid a cool hand gently on his arm. “Clint, please. This is something I can do for you, so please just let me help.”

Clint blinked. Casual touches had always been a rare thing in his life, and the softness of her hands was a strange shock. He was used to people hitting him, medics poking him, and he had learned to accept the warm press of Natasha’s shoulder and Coulson’s steadying grip. Pepper’s hands were nothing like that, kind and uncalloused. He hadn’t thought of his mother for almost a decade, but he thought of her now.

He shook off the feeling and gave her a crooked smile. “I guess I’m supposed to take something from everybody, anyway.”

Pepper laughed and turned away to rifle through yet another of the overflowing drawers. “I thought you were supposed to take something important from everyone on the team?” She pulled out a few more items and started a new pile. “I’m just trying to make sure you don’t freeze to death.”

“Not freezing to death is important,” Clint pointed out, “and you’re as much an Avenger as I am.”

Her face turned bright pink, making her freckles stand out, and she threw a shirt at him, smiling. “Stop it. All I do is try to keep Tony from getting himself killed, including driving the rest of you to homicide. Which might be a herculean task, but it’s hardly heroic.”

“If this team is proof of anything, it’s that there’s a lotta different ways to be a hero, ” Clint said. “I’d say taking care of people who need you is one way, no matter how you do it.”

The smile she gave him was bright and warm, like early morning sunshine, and she kissed him lightly on the cheek as she handed over an armful of soft, stretchy clothes. “I hope these help.”

Clint flushed, probably even redder than she had. “Thanks for the rescue,” he said.

And this was his life, now. Stuck in a different body, coerced into a magical quest, which he was about to undertake wearing designer yoga pants. Awesome.

***

He felt better. Between the comfy-yet-functional clothes and the pleasant efficiency of Pepper’s company, Clint felt more himself than he had since waking up in the hospital with all his pieces on wrong.

Of course, his pieces were still wrong, his head still ached, and there were still Loki’s ridiculous orders hanging over his head. But the challenge was beginning to feel less like a slow march to his death and more like, well, any other day ending in ‘y’.

“ _Barton!_ ”

Stark’s voice, sudden and loud over the intercom, nearly made Clint jump out of his skin.

“Jesus christ. What?”

“Come down here. I’ve got a present for you.”

The last time he’d heard those words, Clint had wound up strapped to an automated quiver with a built-in AI that kept trying to eat him. He shot a suspicious look at the speaker in the ceiling. “What is it?”

“ _That’ll spoil the surprise! Just come see._ ”

Clint sighed. “Fine. Gimme a minute,” he said, trudging on toward his room. If he had to face Stark, he wasn’t going to do it with an armful of his girlfriend’s clothes.

When he did make it down to the workshop, Stark was practically bouncing with excitement. “You are going to love this. Seriously. I don’t care what anybody else is giving you. This is gonna blow it all out of the water.”

“You do know this isn’t a competition.”

Stark looked at him like he might be a little slow. “Of course it’s a competition,” he said. “I saw that super juice Bruce is working on. Pretty cool stuff. But with what I’ve got for you, you won’t even need it.”

Gesturing dramatically, he presented Clint with a slim, black velvet jewelry case. Clint raised an eyebrow. “Y’know, Tony, I’m not sure we’re at that stage in our relationship.”

Stark rolled his eyes. “Just open it. I’ll excuse your sass in light of the incredible awe you’re about to feel.”

Skeptical, Clint took the case and opened it to reveal a small, round pendant. Concentric circles of metal came together to form a mechanical target in silver and grey, strung from a simple ball chain. It looked like something an engineer might wear for luck. He gave Stark a questioning look, and Stark just grinned back.

“Put it on.”

Clint obeyed, letting the pendant fall between his breasts. It was heavier than it looked, heavier than something that size should have been, and he was suddenly very worried about what Stark had planned.

Stark grinned. “Now press the center.”

“Why? What’s it gonna do?”

“Press it and find out.”

“Not until you tell me what it does.”

Stark waved an arm impatiently. “Oh, come on, Barton. Where’s your sense of adventure?” 

“Must’ve left it in my other pants.”

Stark sighed. “Look. I promise it won’t pinch, poke, stab, burn, electrocute, or otherwise harm your delicate porcelain skin,” he told Clint. “But you really just have to try it.”

Clint gave him one last hard stare and gave in. “Fine. But if I die down here in your nerd cave, you’ll never escape the combined fury of Coulson and Romanov.” Clint held the little circle in his fingers, took a deep breath, and pressed down in the center.

The silver rings lit up instantly, glowing the familiar blue of arc reactor energy. A moment later, tiny discs began folding out, linking and expanding, encasing Clint in a wave of moving metal. The whole process took seconds and finished with Clint’s torso covered in a layer of light, scaled armor, gunmetal grey shot through with silver lines, centered around the small, glowing circles on his chest.

He stared down at himself, gaping. “Whoah.”

Stark’s grin could have lit the whole city in a blackout. “Told you. I will now accept your effusive praise and undying gratitude.”

Clint shifted his shoulders, twisting first one way then the other, testing range of motion. The armor was restrictive, but it gave enough that he would still be able to move and fight and, more importantly, shoot. He rapped lightly on it with his knuckles. “Is this the same stuff as your suit?”

“Sort of. Same tech, different function. Think of it as Iron Man Lite.” Stark crossed his arms, studying the lines of the armor rather than looking at Clint’s face. “It’s not the full package, but it’s bulletproof, stab-proof, fireproof, bomb-proof, and pretty much every other kind of proof, short of a nuclear explosion. And, y’know, Loki-proof.”

Clint looked up sharply, and Stark waved a dismissive hand.

“He tried to pull that mind-whammy crap on me. The reactor stopped it.” He shrugged. “SHIELD has the scepter, but I figure you’ll appreciate a little magic-proofing, anyway.”

“Yeah.” Clint touched the rings of distinctive blue that formed a target in the middle of his chest. He had to appreciate Stark’s sense of humor.

“You don’t have to do this, y’know.” Stark was fiddling with the tools on his work table, still not looking at Clint. “You can still tell the others. We can come up with a plan that doesn’t involve you squaring off with the ice princess.”

Clint pressed the center circle, and the armor scales retracted, folding back in on each other until there was nothing left but the small, heavy pendant hanging around his neck. “Yeah, I do, and no, we can’t.”

“Why not?” Stark demanded, an edge of anger creeping into his voice. “What’s so hard about saying, ‘Hey, guys. This alien god is fucking with me. Could use some help not getting dead’?”

Clint gave him a level stare. “That’s rich, coming from you.”

“Don’t change the subject.” Stark pointed a wrench at him. “For once, this isn’t about me. This is about you and your interpersonal issues.”

“No, it’s not. It’s....” Clint shook his head. “It’s a fairytale. At least, I think that’s what Loki’s trying to do. It’s a different set of rules, and I’ve gotta play by those rules until I figure out how to break them.”

Stark met his eye for a second, then shrugged. “If you say so. I’m more of a science fiction fan. And Shakespeare. Gotta love Shakespeare.”

Clint didn’t point out that Shakespeare wrote fairytales, too. “So conceal me what I am and be my aid for such disguise as haply shall become the form of my intent.”

The look Stark gave him was absolutely priceless. “Did you... did you just quote ‘Twelfth Night’?”

Clint shrugged, and turned on his heel, smiling. “I have one heart, one bosom, and one truth.”

“Get out.”

As he neared the door, Stark said, “Barton.” Clint turned back to find Stark watching him with a frown. “Be careful.”

Clint ignored the tightening in his chest, and nodded, holding up the pendant. “Thanks for this. I owe you.”

He could have sworn he heard Stark sigh, “No, you don’t,” but he kept walking.

***

Sleep was still a problem.

Even Pepper’s fancy bra couldn’t mask the strangeness of his body’s shape, and the looming threat of Loki’s challenge hung over him in the dark. He did manage to doze for a while, but he woke shaking from a nightmare in which.... Well, he’d been having that one for a while, anyway. In the wee hours, he gave it up as a lost cause and went slinking into the common area, in search of ice cream.

What he found instead was Coulson, sitting on the couch with his bare feet propped on the coffee table, a glass tumbler in one hand and the other on his chest, fingers resting lightly over his heart. He was staring absently into space, his expression sad and strangely soulful, and the sight of him caught Clint off-guard.

Clint had seen him on his knees among the dead, laid out with injuries that would have had a lesser man screaming, unconscious and concussed in a puddle of fresh blood, and he had never seen Coulson look half as fragile and mortal as he did at that moment.

“Sir?”

Coulson startled, shaken back from wherever his mind had been. “Oh. Clint. Agent Barton.” He cleared his throat, obviously collecting himself, and looked at Clint with tired worry. “Is everything alright?”

“Can’t sleep.” He made a move to plop down and paused, feeling like maybe he was intruding.

Coulson nodded, smiling as he gestured to the couch beside him. “Care to join me?”

“You sure? I mean, I don’t wanna bug you.”

“Since when?” He almost laughed, but his smile faltered. “To be perfectly honest, I’d appreciate the company.”

That was more than enough for Clint. He sat down as Coulson refilled the tumbler from a bottle of vodka resting on the floor beside him. Clint took a swallow and handed it back, letting the cold liquid burn away the taste of dreams from his throat.

“Thought you were a bourbon man.”

“When I’m drinking, yes,” Coulson said, taking a swallow of his own. “This isn’t drinking. This is getting quietly drunk.”

He was, too, Clint saw. His movements were a fraction slower, his speech just slightly less precise, and his face, though still guarded, was less carefully controlled.

“Guess I’m not the only one having a rough night,” Clint remarked. Coulson passed him the tumbler for another drink, frowning.

“You’re not experiencing any additional complications are you?” he asked. “No pain or side effects or....”

“What? No. No, I just....” Clint swallowed down a mouthful of vodka. “Just the same old shit, y’know?"

Coulson sighed. “Yeah. Yes, I do.” His hand returned absently to his chest, the t-shirt fabric shifting under his fingers, and Clint thought of what his bad dreams must be like. Where Clint dreamed of a cold wash of blue in his bones, Coulson must feel a stab of ice through his heart in every nightmare.

“I’m sorry,” Clint said before he could catch the words.

Coulson gave him a blank look. He blinked and kept looking, his eyes fixed on Clint’s face, like he was looking for something that wasn’t there. The stare and the silence went on so long that Clint’s skin started to crawl.

“I know that doesn’t make a difference, b-”

“It’s not that,” Coulson cut him off. “I’m just trying to recall what you’ve done recently that would warrant an apology.”

“I just mean for... y’know.” Clint gestured vaguely toward Coulson’s chest, his hand over his heart. “For... that.”

Coulson’s frown deepened. After a moment, he reached again for the bottle on the floor. “I am either too drunk or too sober for this conversation.” Refilling the tumbler, he sighed. “I would say that it wasn’t your fault, but feeling guilty is rarely in proportion to culpability, especially for you.” He knocked back a shot’s worth and passed the glass to Clint. “So I will simply ask you to believe me when I say that never once in that entire clusterfuck did it occur to me to blame you for anything.”

Clint stared down at the clear liquid, the dim, ambient light glinting on the edges of the glass. “I know that, sir, but I d-”

“Don’t.” There was a strange catch of anger in Coulson’s voice. “Don’t start. The only thing I felt - the only thing any of us felt - was hope that you’d be alright and relief that you were. If anyone expresses a contrary emotion, please send them to me for correction.” He looked Clint dead in the eye and added, seriously, if a little slurred, “And by ‘correction’ I mean reassignment to something very unpleasant. And possibly punching.”

That startled a laugh out of Clint. “I’ll keep that in mind, sir. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” Coulson gave him a smile that flickered and died as his gaze fell. “If I can....” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. I’m a bit drunk.”

“Guess I should start catching up, then.” Clint lifted the tumbler in a salute and drained it into his mouth.

They drank and talked on into the early morning, and Clint eventually woke, blinking and hungover, to find himself curled up on the couch, covered with a soft blanket. Coulson was gone.

***

“No.”

“Clint.”

“No, no, no. Absolutely not.”

Rogers had on his disappointed face. It wasn’t quite as bad as his Disappointed Cap face, but it still gave Clint a little pang. “It’s a gift. You can’t just say no,” Rogers insisted, but Clint shook his head.

“Steve, you love that bike. I’ve seen you make doe eyes at that bike. I’m not taking it.”

“Because it’s a great bike. Which is why I’m giving it to you.”

“Nope. Uh uh.” Clint crossed his arms, staring Rogers down. “I know for a fact that you have exactly two beloved earthly possessions: the shield and the bike. So thanks anyway, but no.”

“So take the shield.”

Clint laughed. “Yeah, sure, okay.”

“I’m serious,” Rogers said, squaring off with Clint and matching his pose. “Tell you the truth, I’d rather you took the shield. It’d do you more good than this old rust bucket.”

“If you call that beautiful piece of machinery a rust bucket again, I might have to hit you on principle,” Clint said. “Also, that’s hilarious.”

“What is?”

“Me with the shield.” Clint shook his head. “Look, Cap, I appreciate it b-”

“I’m not joking.” And there was that Why Do You Hate Freedom face that made Clint feel like he’d just kicked a puppy. “You’re right. Those are the only two things I’ve got that are really worth something, so that’s what I have to give you.”

“Yeah, and both of them are worth more than I am.”

“You don’t get to decide that.” He sighed, and then he was just Steve again, giving Clint a familiar look of exasperation. “The bike or the shield, Barton. What’s it gonna be?”

If someone had told Clint, on his first day at SHIELD, that he would one day have a staring contest with Captain America, he would have laughed himself sick. He sighed. “Fine. I’ll take the bike, but I make no promises to bring it back with a full tank.” _Or to bring it back, at all._

Rogers nodded. “Fair enough. Just try to keep her in one piece.” He held out a hand, and Clint took it with a firm shake. “Try to keep yourself in one piece, too, alright? The team needs our eyes on high.”

“Yeah, yeah. Pretty sure it’ll take more than some magical mystery tour to put me outta the game.” It would not, however, take much more than a touch from Loki, and he took a fraction of comfort in knowing that Rogers was wrong; the team would be fine without him. Probably.

He still felt bad about taking the bike.

***

It was afternoon on day two of three, and Clint was climbing the walls.

The tension of waiting made his ill-fitting skin feel even more wrong, and the lingering hangover and persistent headache didn’t help. He hadn’t seen Coulson, but Clint hoped he’d managed his drinking a little better and wasn’t feeling it quite so bad.

He would have left, would have walked out the door and started hitching north, if he could. Rules were rules, though, and he didn’t want to give Loki any excuse to come back and make good on his threats. Besides, Banner was still working on synthesizing the serum, and Stark wanted to make adjustments to Clint’s armor. He looked out the window, and the clear blue sky stared back at him between the skyscrapers, mocking him.

Another time, he would have gone to the range and taken out his tension on hapless targets, but the memory of Loki’s cold breath on his ear was a little too fresh. Instead, he went looking for the one person he was sure wouldn’t try to give him anything, at least not anything valuable.

Natasha gave him a curious once-over, eying his new clothes. “Pepper?” Clint nodded. “Nice.”

“Yeah.” He stretched out on the floor in front of her chair, and she went back to tapping away at her tablet. “People keep giving me shit. It’s freaking me out.”

“You did say they were supposed to,” she pointed out. There was no pause in her typing, but he knew she was listening.

“Well, yeah, but I thought it would be, y’know, guns or knives or warm socks or something.”

“Warm socks?”

“I don’t know. Do people give each other socks?”

“Maybe if they don’t like each other.” 

“Whatever. But no, I’m getting shit like fancy clothes and special armor.” He raised his head and looked at Natasha. “Thor gave me a sword. Like, an actual magic sword.”

She glanced up from her computer screen. “Really?”

“Really,” he said. “It has a name.”

“Huh.”

“Right?”

She shrugged. “He must like you.”

“I guess.”

Natasha blinked.

“What?”

She shook her head, going back to her work. “You’ll figure it out.”

“What?” he asked, but she just went on tapping. “Nat. Figure out what?”

“You’ll figure it out,” she repeated.

Clint let his head fall back to the floor with a sigh. “You’re a jerk.”

“And you’re an asshole.” To anyone else, her expression would have read as a smirk. Clint knew it was a smile, and he knew it was for him. “You’re also a terrible liar.”

Clint didn’t flinch. He didn’t. “What are you talking about?”

“Please. You had a vision that you have to go on a magic quest?” She tapped away at the screen. “It’s not even a good lie.”

Clint sat up, sighing. “It’s better than the truth, anyway.”

“Loki?” she asked. Clint nodded, and she muttered something in Russian.

“If that translates to ‘Loki is a dick’, I agree wholeheartedly.”

“I assume you’ve thought through the consequences of whatever you’re planning to do.”

“You assume I have a plan,” Clint said. She raised her eyebrow, unamused. “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. Either it works and I come back all fixed-up, or it doesn’t and I don’t. Pretty straightforward.”

“It’s Loki,” Natasha reminded him. “There’s nothing straightforward about it.”

Clint snorted. “Yeah, I guess you’re right about that.” He ran a hand over his face, his too-slight features and his aching head. “I know what this is, and I know.... Look, ‘Tasha, if I don’t come back, there’s something I need you to do.”

Anyone else, he thought, would have reassured him, would have told him not to talk like that, but she just looked him in the eye and said, “Of course.”

Clint took a deep breath and told her grimly, “I need you to get rid of my porn stash.”

He absolutely deserved the foot she shoved in his face, but it was absolutely worth it to hear her laugh. “You are _such_ an asshole.”

“I’m serious!” he insisted. “There’s some freaky shit in there. I don’t need people to know that about me.”

“What? That you like nipple clamps and women who can beat you up? Because that’s not news to anyone.”

They were never a thing, he and Natasha. They fucked a few times, because why not, and there might have been a while when he thought he was in love with her. Maybe in another life, he thought, on another Earth, but not on this one. That didn’t mean they hadn’t marked, catalogued, and recorded every last one of each other’s weaknesses and wants; that was just part of the job.

“Mmm. Nipple clamps.” He put on a dreamy look, and Natasha kicked him again. “But seriously.”

“Seriously, I will get rid of your porn if you die,” she sighed.

“That’s all I’m asking.”

Setting aside her tablet, she leaned forward and gently caught hold of his jaw, tilting his face up to look at her. “I know you’ll just balk at any anything else, so this is what I’m giving you,” she said, holding his gaze. “Come back. I know this is something you have to do, and I respect that, but you are going to finish it and come home. Do you understand?”

“I’ll try, Nat. I just....”

“This is not a request,” she cut him off. “I’m not asking for a favor or a promise. I’m giving you a command: finish it and come home. Do not let Loki beat you, and do _not_ leave me alone with these people.”

Clint snorted. “Aw, come on. They’re not that bad.” She raised an eyebrow. “Steve’s not that bad.”

“Steve Rogers is a good man and one of a kind,” she allowed. “But so are you, and I like you better.”

“You do not.”

“No, of course not, what am I saying.” She let go of his jaw and gave him a light whack across the head. “Idiot.”

Clint sighed and rested his forehead against her knee. She was giving him a command, an order, like a light for him to follow through whatever darkness he was rushing into. Without raising his head, he asked quietly, “Tell me again?”

Natasha carded her fingers through his hair, the gentle touch of a killer’s hands, so much like his. “Come home,” she said. “Do what you have to, and come home. ”

Of all the gifts and tokens, he thought, hers might be the heaviest to carry.

***

He dreamed of ice and woke before sunrise, shivering.

Everything was packed and ready to go: the clothes from Pepper, the serum from Banner, some food and supplies, no more of anything than would fit in one light pack. He strapped Thor’s sword against his back, leaving it wrapped up to avoid... well, to avoid looking like a crazy lady with a sword walking down the street.

Reaching for his bow and quiver, Clint hesitated.

 _Bearing only these things_ , Loki had said. Were his own weapons items of power? Would bringing them break the rules? He figured he was already pushing it with the little necessary extras and thought, fuck it.

If Loki wanted Clint, he’d get the business end of an arrow, too.

Besides, he hadn’t quite met the requirements, anyway; he didn’t have anything from Coulson.

It stung, maybe, to be let go without a word, but Coulson had given him so much - too much - already. Clint was grateful, and he wasn’t about to ask for more.

He went down to the tower’s massive private garage, where Rogers kept his precious motorbike stowed safely away. All things being equal, Clint would have just left it and stolen something that wouldn’t be missed, but then Rogers would probably just come after him on the damn thing and _make_ him take it.

The sun was just coming up over the city, a hint of it creeping down through the garage door, already open and waiting. The bike, too, was standing ready, polished and packed, and leaning against it, wearing faded jeans and a worn bomber and looking way too good for that early in the morning, was Coulson.

Something sudden and warm rose up and caught in Clint’s throat, equal parts astonishment and apprehension, and he swallowed it down hard. “Come to see me off, sir?”

“In part.” Coulson’s eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, but Clint could still feel them on his face. “Captain Rogers wasn’t certain you’d remember your bike. I thought I’d make sure it was prepped.”

“Oh.” Clint blinked. “Thanks.”

“And I’m coming with you.”

“The hell you are.”

“I am.” Coulson didn’t move an inch from where he stood, leaned against the bike. “You have to take something of value from everyone, right?”

Clint’s head throbbed. “Yeah.”

“Well, unless you’d like a custom beretta or a very nice suit, the only thing I have to offer is myself,” he said. “And I don’t think my jackets would fit you.”

“Then give me the gun,” Clint replied, holding out his hand. He’d learned long ago that arguments with Coulson were best won quickly; the longer it drew on, the more likely he’d be to give in.

Coulson frowned. “In all the time we’ve known each other, have you ever seen anyone but me so much as touch that gun?”

Clint didn’t drop his hand. “No.”

“Then what makes you think I’m going to give it to you?”

“Because I’m your favorite,” Clint drawled. “Now give me the fucking gun and get out of my way.”

“Because you’re my favorite,” Coulson said slowly, “I’m coming with you.”

“No, sir, you’re not.” Clint pulled back his hand and readied it in a fist. “And, with respect, I will drop you where you stand if you don’t step back.”

“No you won’t.” Coulson stood, then, facing Clint in a pose of casual menace. “For one thing, you only just beat me on a good day. Right now, you’re exhausted, distracted, and still adjusting to a lowered center of gravity. I’d have you on the ground in seconds. For another....” He paused, jaw clenching like he didn’t want to show so much of his hand. “For another, you just won’t. I know you, and I know that, necessities of the job aside, you don’t like hurting people. You don’t have it in you to throw an unprovoked punch at someone you care about.”

Clint didn’t think there were enough hours left in his lifetime to even _begin_ unpacking that statement. “Okay. Fine.”

He resettled the weight on his back and walked around Coulson and the bike, headed for the open door.

“Barton.”

He kept walking.

“Clint, stop.”

He didn’t look back. His stomach churned, cold and heavy with anxious foreboding. Every step drove him deeper into Loki’s trap, and he’d rather have cut off his feet and crawled than drag Coulson in with him.

Behind him, the bike’s engine rumbled to life and grew louder as Coulson drew up beside him.

“At the risk of sounding excessively creepy, you know that you can’t actually run away and hide,” Coulson said over the machine’s low roar. He was walking the bike slowly along, matching Clint’s pace. “I can find you, and I will follow you.”

“Why? Dying once wasn’t enough for you?” Clint snapped.

Coulson jerked the bike over into Clint’s path, close enough that his knee knocked against Clint’s leg as he turned. Clint could feel the heat from the engine on his skin, only half as hot at the glare Coulson gave him, even through the sunglasses.

“I made a choice then, and I’m making one now,” he said, his voice low and hard. “You are not responsible for those decisions, nor do you get a say in making them. I am coming with you. Period. Now get on the damn bike before I give into my better judgment, knock you out, and find a place to tie you up until you grow some damn sense.”

Clint knew that voice. It was the voice Coulson used when he was talking Clint down from doing something stupid, when everything around him was going to shit and someone had to hold the center, when he was giving everything he had just to keep his people alive. It was the voice he used when he was scared and couldn’t let anyone see it.

Clint, of course, had always seen it, and he could see whatever it was behind the fear that drove it forward.

He sighed. “Fuck you, sir.”

“You should be so lucky,” Coulson sniped as Clint climbed onto the bike behind him. He grabbed one of the helmets hanging from the handlebars and passed it back to Clint.

Clint raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

“Safety first, Agent Barton.” He waited until Clint had the helmet settled to pull on his own, then asked, “North?”

Clint nodded. He might not know where they were headed, but at least he knew which direction to take.

As Coulson kicked the bike into gear and zoomed out of the garage into the early-morning traffic, Clint held tight to the old leather of the bomber jacket and felt strangely safe for the first time in days.


	3. In which a journey is undertaken and some truths are revealed.

They went north, winding through traffic along the shining line of the Hudson with no more aim than what the highway offered and no more direction than a cold voice that echoed relentlessly in Clint’s head.

The ability to fall asleep in strange places was a hard-won skill that had served Clint well. It served him now as he dozed on the back of the motorcycle, pressed close against Coulson’s back. It might have been awkward or uncomfortable, but Clint was, for one thing, too tired to care and, for another, too familiar with the sense of Coulson inside his space to feel anything but safe.

In between the light reverie of sleep, he watched the cities and suburbs slip past, a blur of green and concrete whipping by at a speed that pushed the upward edge of legal. The Canadian border came and went, ushered by with a flash of SHIELD IDs, and they paused, at last, at a fast-food restaurant outside of Montreal.

While the two of them launched a joint assault on a pile of cheeseburgers and fries, Coulson pulled up a map on his tablet, marking their location.

“We’re making good time,” he said. “At least, I assume we are, since I have no idea where we’re going.”

Clint shrugged. “North is all I got. I guess we just keep going ‘til we hit something.”

“Something like the arctic circle.” Coulson looked at the map again. “Or the Hudson Strait, as the case may be.”

“Maybe we can swing by the North Pole. Get some early Christmas presents.”

“Mmhm. And which of Santa’s lists do you think you’re on?”

Clint licked a smear of ketchup off of his thumb, grinning. “You saying I’m naughty, sir?”

“Naughty is too pleasant a word for what you are.”

At the next table, sat a small white family in t-shirts with their “value” meals and chattering children. The patriarch was giving Clint a strange look, as was one of the daughters. Clint smiled at the little girl, and she grinned brightly back, even as her father scowled.

“Don’t antagonize the locals,” Coulson warned, not quite softly enough to be discrete.

“Just being friendly,” Clint replied, but he ignored the father’s glare.

"I've seen your idea of friendly, and it is not appropriate for a family restaurant."

"Alright, fine, I'm behaving." Clint shoved a bite of cheeseburger into his mouth and resisted the urge to stick out his tongue. The man went back to his meal, though the little girl continued to sneak glances at Clint.

Coulson was still poking at the map, holding a burger in his free hand. He had, as far as Clint could tell, only taken one bite.

"Lemme have a look at that, " Clint said, reaching for the tablet. "Your food feels neglected."

"I am capable of eating and operating a computer at the same time," Coulson informed him, but he handed it over, just the same.

"Sure you are, sir." Clint studied the map, frowning, as Coulson inhaled his cheeseburger. “We keep going straight up, we’re gonna run out of road soon.”

“There should be logging and access roads through most of the forest area, but, if we run into snow, those may not be safe on the bike,” Coulson said, starting in on a second burger. Clint had long ago come to the happy conclusion that, where food was concerned, he and Coulson were soulmates.

“Knew I shoulda left the fucking bike,” Clint grumbled, and Coulson gave him a look.

“And done what? Walked?”

Clint shrugged. “I could’ve hitched for a while. Then, I don’t know, bought a horse, or something. Snowmobile. Hit the water and gotten a boat.” In all honesty, he hadn’t expected to get far enough for it to matter; he figured Loki would run him down long before the roads ended.

“Horses might not be a bad idea, actually,” Coulson admitted. “Appropriate, too, given the nature of the excursion.”

“ _Excursion_ ,” Clint repeated. “I guess that’s better than _quest_.”

A smile flickered on Coulson’s mouth. “Why don’t we just call it a road trip?”

“Hah! Is that what you’re gonna put on your mission report?” Clint snorted.

The little smile vanished, wiped back to Coulson’s default expression of cautious distance. “I wasn’t planning to file a report,” he said. “I’ll put a note in the Avengers logs, obviously, in case something like this ever happens again, but this isn’t a mission. This is helping a friend.”

Clint prodded at his small pile of fries and ignored the warm, sick feeling in his stomach. “So what’d you do? Use your vacation days?” Coulson’s jaw twitched. “Wait, seriously?” Coulson cleared his throat. “You actually used your vacation days for this shit?”

“I informed the director that I was taking a leave of absence and travelling with you,” Coulson said mildly. “That falls under the heading of personal time off.”

“You took personal time to go on a road trip with me?” Clint laughed. “That’s very romantic, sir.”

Coulson’s face remained careful and unreadable. “Careful, Agent Barton. People will talk.”

Clint shrugged. “They already do.”

Unexpectedly, Coulson flinched. “Yes, I’d heard that. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry? For what? I’m flattered they think you’d be into me.”

Coulson blinked. He seemed to start to speak, paused, and sat back, looking down at the half-eaten cheeseburger in front of him. Without his customary suit, he sat across from Clint in a grey t-shirt, sunglasses hooked on his collar and jacket draped over the back of his chair. He looked relaxed and young and, at the moment, a little uncertain.

“Just because I don’t like men doesn’t mean I care if people think that I do.” Clint ran that sentence back in his head and decided that, yes, it did make sense and, no, it probably wasn’t accidentally offensive. “And if I did, I’d be fucking lucky to have a guy like you, so fuck it. Let ‘em talk. Most of ‘em are probably jealous, anyway.”

Something unfamiliar crossed Coulson’s face, and he smiled faintly, shaking his head. “I am quite the catch, it’s true.”

Clint grinned and lifted his cup of soda. “I’ll drink to that, sir.”

***

By the time they stopped for the night, Clint was ready for a hot shower and officially over the allure and romance of a motorcycle road trip. Once the motel room was checked and secure, he crashed face-first into the bed nearest the door and groaned.

“My ass has never been this sore.”

“Normally, I don’t hear that until morning,” Coulson deadpanned, dropping onto the other bed with a thump.

Clint lifted his head to see Coulson stretched out across the blue comforter, one leg hanging over the side, still wearing the soft leather jacket. He was rubbing at his eyes, his face flush from the wind and streaked faintly with road dust.

“You must be a hell of a date,” Clint said, and Coulson gave a short laugh.

“Never had any complaints.”

“Damn straight,” Clint told him, yawning. “You’re a fucking gentleman and smoking hot. Nothing to complain about.”

Coulson scrubbed a hand over his face and sat up, looking over at Clint with something like a smile. “Remind me never to let you set me up.”

Clint grinned. “Aw c’mon. I’d be a great wingman. Get you all kinds of action.”

“Yes, because that couldn’t possibly end badly.”

“What’s the matter, sir? You don’t trust me?”

“Agent Barton, I would trust you with my life in a second, but I don’t want you anywhere near my love life.”

“I’m hurt, sir.”

Coulson snorted. “You’ll get over it.”

Clint flipped onto his back, stretching out his cramped muscles. “Might get over it faster if you let me have the shower first.”

Coulson shot him a look that was somehow a sigh, an eye-roll, and a fond smile, all at once. “If you use all the hot water, I will take the bike and go back to New York.”

It was a joke, but Clint felt a pang of guilt, just the same. Coulson wasn’t supposed to be here, should have been safe at home in the tower, not sharing a ratty motel room with Clint. He masked the moment of unease by flinging a thin pillow at Coulson’s head as he bounded for the bathroom. “Fucking gentleman, sir.”

“Remember that when I start snoring,” Coulson called after him, and Clint laughed.

***

On their first extended mission together, Clint had learned, to his delight, that the first and most undeniable of Coulson's vices was pizza.

They sat on the floor of the motel room, in the narrow space between the two beds, with a large pizza on one side and a six-pack of beer on the other. Clint was backed up against one bed, legs stretched out, facing Coulson. It was like any other mission, the two of them sharing a meal, a drink, and each other's company, and it was almost enough to make Clint forget his aching head and how completely fucked everything was.

"Hey whatever happened to that guy?" Clint asked. "What's his name? Trevor? Tyler?"

"Tom?" Coulson frowned. "Clint, that was years ago."

"Yeah, but you haven't talked about anybody else." Clint took a long pull on his beer, cold and crisp. "Don't tell me you've been hiding that fine ass away from the world."

Coulson huffed. "I'm sorry, when was the last time you had a date?"

“Uh uh. That’s totally different,” Clint said around a mouthful of pizza. “You’re the one that gets to do all that normal stuff.”

“Normal stuff?” Coulson raised an eyebrow. “Like what?”

Clint shrugged. “Y’know, like, go out, date, have a life. That kinda stuff.”

Coulson paused, giving Clint a curious look. “I’m not sure I want to touch all the assumptions behind that statement,” he said. “Suffice to say that my job has been my life for a long time, and it doesn’t leave much room for anything else.”

"Yeah, I guess wrangling superheroes would cramp your style." Clint chewed thoughtfully. "Still sucks, though."

"Sometimes, but it's worth the trade," Coulson said. He smiled sadly and kept his eyes down, looking away. Then he gave a light sigh and added, “Though I do miss getting laid on a regular basis.”

Clint threw back his head and laughed. “Now, that is a damn fucking shame,” he said, and Coulson tossed a pepperoni at his face, smiling.

It was easy to relax with Coulson, easier than with the others. Clint counted his teammates as friends, but there was a tension he couldn’t quite shake, a sense of having to hold his own, to keep up. They needed his skills in top form; Coulson never seemed to need anything more than his company.

“What would you do?” Clint asked. “If you were suddenly, y’know....” He gestured at his own ill-fitting body.

“If I were transformed into a woman?” Coulson hummed, considering. “Well, after the initial crisis management and all else being equal, I suppose the first thing I would do is masturbate.”

Clint nearly choked on a mouthful of beer. “You’re kidding.”

“I think it would be a fascinating experience,” Coulson replied mildly. “Did that really not occur to you?” Clint shook his head, and Coulson frowned. “You never thought to explore how sex might feel to the women you sleep with?”

Clint opened his mouth to answer, stopped, closed it, and thought. “Huh. I guess I didn’t think about it like that.” He paused. “Wow. _Wow_ , I’m a dick.”

“Well, not at the moment.”

“Hey.”

“Sorry.” Coulson gave him a smile, entirely unapologetic. “You’re a straight man. Ninety percent of the world around you caters to your sexuality. Why would you spare a thought for anyone else’s?”

There was no accusation in Coulson’s tone, just an edge of weariness that Clint heard whenever a new agent asked Coulson if he had a girlfriend and once when Stark tried to set him up with a string of supermodels. Still, Clint felt a stab of guilt and thought of Strange’s admonition that the transformation was meant to reveal a truth he’d kept hidden from himself. Maybe this was part of it, broadening his perspective, learning to not be such a tool.

“So what’s it like?” he asked. “I mean, getting... y’know. Being on that side of it.”

Coulson knit his brows, frowning. “Are you asking how it feels to be sexually penetrated?”

“...Yes?”

The expression that crossed over Coulson’s face was somehow both bemused and pained. It vanished behind a cool mask of careful composure, but a light flush stayed high on his cheeks. “First of all, again, this question is only occurring to you _now_ , after, presumably, many years of having penetrative sex with women.”

Clint rubbed at the back of his neck. “Geez. When you put it like that....”

“Second,” Coulson went on, “contrary to popular belief, not all gay men enjoy being penetrated, and I’d prefer if you didn’t make assumptions about my sexual preferences.” Clint flinched. “Finally....” Coulson sighed. “Finally, women and men have radically different anatomies where sex is concerned, and, for the sake of all your past and future sexual partners, I sincerely hope you realize that.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I had the birds and the bees talk, thanks.” Coulson shot him a look, and Clint’s face heated. “I mean, yes, I know, and you’re right. I do try to, y’know.... I’m not a jerk in bed. I know there’s more to it than tab A slot B, but you’re right. I shoulda thought about it a long time ago, and I.... Well, I definitely shoulda thought before I asked that question. That was dumb and, I guess, kinda personal. I’m sorry.”

For a long moment, Coulson just looked at him, silent, still wearing that careful mask. Just as Clint opened his mouth to apologize again, Coulson said, “It’s very... vulnerable.” Clint’s jaw clicked shut. “Physically, it’s.... Well, it’s a fine line. Done correctly, it can be an overwhelming sensation. If both parties aren’t careful, th-”

“Yeah,” Clint said quickly. “Yeah, that part I know.”

Coulson stopped. “Right. Of course. I’m sorry.”

Clint shook his head, waving off the apology. “Whatever. So you do it right, and it feels like, what? Like getting filled up?”

“More or less, but it’s also.... It requires opening some very intimate physical and emotional boundaries. It takes a certain kind of trust. Anyone....” Coulson cleared his throat. “It’s like letting someone put their hands around your throat, putting someone in a position to really hurt you and trusting them not to.”

“Fuck,” Clint muttered. “Say it like that, it makes you wonder why anyone does it.”

Coulson shrugged. “Because it’s worth it? Because it feels good. Because sometimes... sometimes sex is as much about getting closer as it is about getting off.”

“Sometimes, yeah.” Clint couldn't look too closely at that. He wondered how many things of value had been handed to him unawares and how much trust and confidence he had unwittingly betrayed.

Suddenly, Coulson laughed. “God, I really do need to get laid.”

Clint kicked his hip lightly, grinning. “Do we need to go trawl the bar?”

“At a motel in rural Canada? No, thank you.” Coulson reached for another beer. “I think my frustration will keep until we get back to New York.”

“Hey, maybe Stark can hook you up with a mechanical boyfriend, or something.”

“There’s an app for that,” Coulson deadpanned, and Clint snorted. “Stark Industries does have a branded line of sex toys.”

Clint blinked. “They do not.”

“They do.”

“You’re a liar.”

“On my grandmother’s grave. You can look it up.”

Clint paused. “I don’t think I want anything with Stark’s name on it anywhere near my dick.”

“That is exactly what I said. My company at the time was rather disappointed.” Coulson took a long pull on his beer. “It was a very unfortunately timed discovery.”

Clint laughed so hard, his face hurt.

***

In the dream, there is a monster.

He can’t hear it, but it’s there. The cold shiver of its presence winds around his spine, freezing him in place.

Natasha pulls at his hand, screaming at him in silence, and she is a beacon of red fire. He doesn’t move, can’t move, and now she is his brother, grabbing him by the hair, dragging him forward. Now it’s Coulson, his hands on Clint’s shoulders. Clint tells him to run, the monster is coming, but there’s no sound.

There’s cold inside him, ripping, shredding, splitting him open, and he is the monster. He opens his jaws full of icicle teeth, and he closes them on soft flesh, a well of hot blood rushing over his tongue.

The sudden touch on his skin was burning, and Clint reacted on instinct, jerking his attacker off-balance and onto the bed beside him. The figure went easily, and Clint rolled with the momentum, pinning his assailant to the mattress. He raised a fist, aimed for the throat, and felt the vibrations as the body beneath him spoke.

Clint froze, blinking the dream haze out of his eyes.

The blackout curtains were drawn, the room lit only by a sliver of bright light from the street lamp outside the window, but Clint could make out Coulson’s face in the dark. The vibrations came again as he spoke, and Clint zeroed in on his lips, tracking their shapes and meanings.

_...okay. Clint, it’s okay. It’s me. You’re safe._

Clint shook his head, forced himself to breathe, deep and even. He was in a motel room in a city in Quebec province. He was with Phil Coulson, who he trusted. He had a nightmare, just a nightmare. He was safe.

Carefully, he rolled away, and Coulson sat up slowly, ducking his head to keep Clint’s face in sight, keeping his hands spread and palms out. He did everything right, and Clint felt a spike of shame burning in his belly, simmering in the wake of the receding adrenaline. With a sigh, Clint crooked a finger over his ear; Coulson immediately found the hearing aids on the nightstand and pressed them into his hand.

“Clint?”

“Fine,” he mumbled. “I’m fine. I’m sorry.”

Coulson shook his head. “Don’t. Don’t do that. I shouldn’t have touched you. I just.... You couldn’t hear me, and I had t-”

“It’s fine,” Clint snapped. In the dark, he caught the faint flicker as Coulson flinched back, and the shame in his stomach burned hotter. “Sorry. It’s just a bad dream.” He tried to soften his face into a half-smile. “Sorry I woke you.”

Coulson sighed, “You didn’t.” He huffed out a sound too tired to be a laugh. “Honestly, I haven’t slept more than a few hours in months.”

Clint looked at him more closely and, even in the dim shadows, saw the lines of exhaustion around his eyes, the weariness at the corners of his mouth. "Jesus. We're a pair, aren't we?"

This time, Coulson's laugh had a touch of real humor in it. "If Captain Rogers could see us now."

Clint cringed. "Pretty sure he'd have us on mandatory psych leave. Or me, anyway."

"It's entirely possible we need it," Coulson observed.

"Yeah," Clint said. "Too bad you used your vacation days to come trailing after me."

"I can think of worse vacations."

Something was strange in his voice, but Clint looked at him and saw only a tired smile and that same careful expression.

Clint cleared his throat. "That's the sleep deprivation talking, sir." He sat back against the flimsy headboard, pulling the tangled sheets around him. "You oughta get some rest. Cap'll never forgive me if I let you crash his bike. It’s one of a kind."

"Whereas you're entirely replaceable." Coulson sighed. "I suppose I should try for a little more sleep, at least."

Clint patted the pillow next to him. "C'mon. Pretty sure I'm up for the duration. I can keep an eye out for the bogeyman."

Coulson gave him an indecipherable look and made to stand. "I can go back t-"

"No." Clint caught hold of his wrist. "I mean, you don't...." With every night and every nightmare, there was a fleeting moment of weakness where Clint wanted nothing more than the warmth of a human presence in the bed beside him. Keeping watch over Coulson's sleep seemed like it might be just what he needed. "This room is fucking freezing, sir. I'm afraid we're gonna have to cuddle for warmth."

For a second, he thought Coulson might shake him off and leave him alone in the dark. Then, in one breath, the tension went out of Coulson’s shoulders, and he slumped down on the bed beside Clint. “I guess turning up the thermostat would make too much sense,” he said dryly.

“Nah, I fiddled with it earlier,” Clint said as Coulson settled under the bedclothes next to him. “Never trust anything with that many buttons.”

Coulson snorted. “Your bow and quiver are one of the most sophisticated personal weapons systems on the planet.”

“Totally different.” Clint yawned and leaned back against the headboard.

“How?”

“It’s gotta do complicated shit.” Coulson lay on his side, his back pressed against Clint’s hip. “All that thing has to do is make it hotter or colder.”

“Your logic is astounding, as always,” Coulson murmured sleepily.

Clint lifted a hand, paused, then laid it gently on Coulson’s shoulder. “Shut up and go to sleep, sir.”

Coulson grumbled something, but all Clint caught was “ridiculous” before his breathing began to slow. In moments, Coulson was asleep, and Clint was left to keep watch through the night, his thoughts resting on the soothing warmth beside him and not on cold monsters with icicle teeth and the taste of blood on his tongue.

***

The howling of a spring storm woke Clint from a doze in the early morning. He had shifted down in the bed, and Coulson’s head was pillowed peacefully against his side. There was a surreal stillness to the dark room, surrounded as it was by the sound of violent wind and pounding rain.

The hazy fringes of another dream hung in Clint’s head, this one warm and full of soft touches, and his skin felt flush with a heat that was at once familiar and entirely new. Moving slowly, he slipped out of the bed, careful not to disturb Coulson, who murmured in his sleep and stretched his arm out across the place where Clint had been.

After the darkness and noise, the small motel bathroom was uncomfortably bright and silent, and Clint stood blinking at himself in the big mirror. His not-quite-right reflection stared back, pale under the harsh fluorescence, all his color washed away. He sighed and turned on the tap, splashing cool water on his face and neck.

The heat in his skin remained. It lingered between his legs in a warm, wet pool of longing that made him want to cross his thighs and squeeze. He turned away from the mirror to lean back against the vanity, and, because he couldn’t think of a good reason not to, slid a hand into his shorts.

It had, admittedly, been a while since he’d really touched a woman, but he knew the mechanics well enough. Even with the change in angles and the continuous dissonance between his body as he knew it and his body as it was, finding the right place to touch wasn’t much of a challenge.

He dragged his finger through the soft, damp creases of flesh and let his eyes flutter closed. His standard store of fantasies seemed lacking for this particular moment, but his mind rifled through them, searching for something that might suit.

He thought of a girl from years before, with thick dark hair and sweet brown eyes, who’d taken him home to her big soft bed and let him eat her out for what seemed like hours. In his memory was the smell of her skin, the taste of her cunt, the feel of her moans vibrating on his tongue. Clint licked his lips and rubbed circles around his clit as the heat in him burned hotter.

Was that what she had felt, that sharp, bright pleasure? He imagined the rough tip of a tongue swirling where his fingers were. He imagined hands braced on the insides of his thighs, holding him open, and a hot mouth sucking at skin that was nothing but sensation.

He imagined her face where his had been, and he shivered, drawing closer to the edge. It would have been different for her, though; not slim hands and soft lips, but wide, callused palms and the rasp of stubble against her skin. Clint imagined another man on his knees, his face buried in Clint’s cunt, and Clint groaned.

It was easy to think of big hands pressing along his thighs, a strong jaw working between his legs. Clint moved his fingers faster, and it was easy to picture his knees hooked over broad shoulders and sweet blue eyes blinking up at him, all their caution and weariness burned away by fierce desire. That image should have stopped him, should have given him pause, but it was so easy and so right and he was so _so_ close.

“Disgusting.”

Clint’s eyes snapped open.

Loki stood with his back against the bathroom door, watching Clint with a thin, cold smile. Clint jerked his hand out of his shorts and stood up from the vanity. He wanted to pull away, to put as much distance between himself and Loki as he could, but the cramped space offered barely enough room for the two of them without Clint backing himself into a corner.

“Oh, don’t stop on my account,” Loki drawled. “I know how humans can be about your base urges.”

All the heat Clint felt evaporated into shame and tense, freezing fear. He forced his face into a scowl and spat, “That why you’re here? To watch me jack off?”

Loki made a face of revulsion. “What interest could I possibly have in your pitiful self-abuse? If I wanted you, I would have you and be done with it.” His eyes flickered over Clint’s body, at once dismissive and repulsed. “I won’t sully myself with your filth, and neither, it seems, will anyone else.”

There was knife tucked between the folded towels. However fast Clint moved, Loki would move faster, but Clint could grab the knife and, at the very least, go down fighting. He could make enough noise to alert Coulson, but that might bring him rushing into Loki’s hands and get them both killed for nothing. Maybe Loki would just kill him, quickly and quietly, and leave his body on the bathroom floor for Coulson to find in the morning.

“Just wanted a little me time,” Clint said lightly. “You should try it. Might help you relax a little.”

Loki’s scowl deepened. “I will rest easily enough when you’ve completed your task and I can be gone from this wretched world.”

“Yeah, which is what, exactly? Still not clear on where I’m going or what I’m supposed to do.” Even as he asked for answers, Clint wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

In a deliberate tone, as if speaking to a child, Loki said, “To the north, there is a great water with a family of islands near its shore. From there, you shall retrieve for me a thing of power. Once it is mine, I will restore your true nature and leave you in peace.”

Clint could hear the lies dripping off the words as they rolled from Loki’s tongue. It was plain as day that the moment Loki had what he wanted, Clint would be dead. “So what are you after?” he asked. “And what the fuck do you need me for?”

“That doesn’t concern you, at present.”

“The fuck it doesn’t.” Clint leaned up and growled into Loki’s face. “You wanna jerk me around, you better give me a damn good reason.”

“My _reason_ , you driveling degenerate, is that I require a mortal for this task, and you, with your pathetic pride and your eternally broken heart, are the simplest tool,” Loki snarled. “You will do as I command, without hesitation and without question, and that is all you need know until our agreement is concluded.”

The _conclusion_ was the part Clint was worried about. “Yeah, how ‘bout no. I’m not moving an inch ‘til you tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Loki narrowed his eyes and inclined his head so that his nose nearly touched Clint’s, close enough that Clint could feel the cold on his skin. “You will do as I command,” he repeated. “If you do not, then the miserable creature now sleeping in your bed will wake in agony as I rip his heart from him and burn it to ash before his eyes.”

Clint’s insides froze. “Do it and I’ll kill you, myself,” he said, and Loki laughed.

“With what? The little blade hidden in your bathing linens?” He moved faster than Clint could follow, and the knife was in his hand, the point of it pressed against the hollow of Clint’s throat.

Clint tried not to swallow as his pulse pounded hard all through him. “Oh, wow, how did that get there.”

Loki smiled, and he dragged the knife slowly up the curve of Clint’s throat, trailing pain behind it. “Where it was should interest you much less than where it will be, where it might be. Think of that the next time a refusal rises to your lips.” The knife point stopped just below Clint’s chin, just one thrust away from punching up into his mouth. “The journey should take you no more than two days. I shall look for you as the sun falls on the second. Do not keep me waiting.”

Clint blinked, and Loki was gone.

His arm moved slowly, like it was fighting the command to rise, and his hand was unsteady as it touched the stinging line on his neck. He pulled his hand away and looked down at the bright blood on his fingers. It wasn’t much, not nearly enough to be dangerous, but the sight of it hit him like a punch.

Loki had put a knife to his throat, had cut him, was using him. Loki was going to kill him.

Clint’s knees shook, and he sat down hard on the tiled floor. He forced himself to breathe, in and out, trying to stop the panic welling up in his stomach.

There was a soft knock on the door, and Clint jumped.

“Clint?”

It was Coulson, his voice cautious and worried, muffled through the door.

“Clint, are you alright?”

Clint opened his mouth to answer that he was fine, everything was fine, nothing to see here. He looked down at the blood on his hand, and no sound came out.

“I’m going to open the door,” Coulson said. “I hope you can hear me and you’re not indecent.”

The door opened slowly onto the pitch black of the motel room, and Coulson’s face appeared in the crack, squinting against the glare from the bathroom light. At the sight of Clint sitting there bleeding, his expression changed instantly.

“Oh my god.” He grabbed a small towel from the rack and knelt, lifting Clint’s chin gently so that he could press the cloth against the wound. “Are you okay? What happened? You were in here so long, and I heard your voice. I just… Jesus Christ. Are you okay?”

His touch on Clint’s neck was soft, and Clint couldn’t help but flinch away from it. “I’m fine. It’s… it’s okay. It’s not deep.”

Coulson swore under his breath. “I’m going to get the med kit. I’ll be right back, okay?” He tilted Clint’s face down and looked him in the eye. “Okay?”

Slowly, Clint nodded. “Okay.”

He held the towel in place until Coulson came back with the small kit and a blanket from one of the beds. Folding the blanket onto the floor, he explained, “This will be easier if you lie down. Can you do that?”

“Just a cut,” Clint grumbled, but he sank obediently onto the blanket and shut his eyes to block out the bright light above. Coulson took the towel from his neck and returned it a moment later, now damp and warm, carefully wiping away the blood that had trailed down his chest. “Gonna mess up the towels,” he said, and Coulson huffed.

“On my list of immediate concerns, the towels aren’t a priority.” Coulson’s voice was tight and careful, concealing a current of anger. “Please just tell me you didn’t... Clint, I’m sorry, but I have to know if you did this to yourself.”

Clint cracked his eyes to see Coulson’s face, eclipsing the harsh glare and keeping that familiar cautious distance, attention focused on the stinging cut and not on Clint’s answer.

“No,” Clint said. “No, if I was gonna kill myself I wouldn’t slit my throat in a motel bathroom. I got a little dignity left.”

Coulson didn’t smile, didn’t laugh, and he didn’t look at Clint’s face. “So what happened?”

Loki’s voice lingered like a chill in Clint’s skin and a sickness in his stomach. The pretense would come apart sooner or later, but Clint couldn’t find the fortitude to tell Coulson the truth, not now, not when the end was so close. Loki was going to kill him, and all Clint wanted in the world was to keep Coulson’s faith for as long as he could.

“Tell you later,” he said. Coulson paused, and Clint caught a flash of uncertainty in his drawn brows. “I will. I promise. Just... not now, please.”

Coulson sighed, and Clint felt a pinch as he placed a line of small butterfly bandages along the cut. “Well, you don’t need stitches, but we should get you to a doctor, anyway.”

“No time. I know where we’re going, and we’ve only got two days to get there.” The skin pulled as Coulson taped a strip of gauze over the wound, and Clint fought down the feeling of being collared and choked. With the dressing finished, Coulson helped him sit up and collected the blanket from the floor. He startled as Coulson gently draped the blanket around his shoulders, and the shivering he hadn’t noticed began to ease.

Coulson sat back and looked at Clint evenly, like he was weighing the value of the truth against the the trouble of extracting it. Maybe he was reconsidering his choice to come along, wishing he was in his bed at the tower instead of patching Clint up on a bathroom floor at four in the morning. Something twisted in Clint’s stomach, and he was torn between wanting Coulson far away and safe and just needing him to stay. He thought suddenly of what he had been doing before Loki appeared, what he had imagined and wanted, and the twisting inside him turned hot.

“Look, you don’t… I mean, I’m supposed to do this by myself, anyway.”

“Don’t. Don’t start.”

“Phil…”

“Don’t,” Coulson repeated. He sighed and gave Clint a look full of quiet determination. “You know where we’re going?” Clint nodded. “Then let’s go.”

Within the hour, the storm had passed, and they were once again on Steve’s bike, racing up the highway in the light of a silver sunrise. Clint held on tight and buried his face in the soft comfort of Coulson’s jacket.

***

The next day seemed to pass faster than the first, which may have been due to the fact that Coulson appeared bound and determined to shatter every posted speed limit they crossed. Clint might have thought Coulson was in a hurry to get rid of him, except that Coulson always drove like that; it was one of Clint’s favorite things about him.

More likely, Clint thought, the time flew by because he wanted so badly for it to stop. Every mile that went beneath the wheels brought him closer to Loki, closer to whatever end awaited him, and part of him longed to stay on the bike, pressed against Coulson’s back, riding a never-ending road until the rest of the world fell away.

He spent a lot of the day trying not to look too closely at that desire.

The day ended at a tiny motel in a tiny rural town that, in a twist straight out of a bad romance novel, only had single rooms available. With his cautious expression and mild tone, Coulson offered to sleep on the floor.

Clint, either out of selfishness or a lack of self-preservation, shrugged. “Not the first time we’ve had to share.”

They arrived late and made a meal of packaged snacks and day-old pastries from a convenience store across the street. As he tore open a pack of corn chips, Coulson remarked dryly, “I’m fairly certain my mother is rolling in her grave, right now.”

Clint laughed. “What, pretzels and pop aren’t a balanced meal?”

“For a college freshman, maybe.”

“So pretend we’re in college,” Clint said. “We’re, uh, roommates. On a road trip.”

Coulson smiled. “Well, that part’s almost true.”

“And we’re on a mission to…” Clint paused. “Why _do_ college kids take road trips?”

“I don’t know. To find ourselves?”

Clint looked down at himself, more familiar now, but still not right. “Guess that part’s kinda true, too.”

“Well, to regain an aspect of yourself.” Coulson caught his eye. “You’re still you.”

Clint gave him a smile. “For better or worse, huh?”

“Better,” Coulson said. “Definitely better.”

There was a note in his voice that churned up that warm feeling in Clint’s stomach, and Clint swallowed a mouthful of pop, trying to wash it away. After a long moment, he said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Coulson looked up, frowning, and Clint’s nerve faltered. He took a deep breath and pressed on. “I lied. It’s not… There wasn’t any vision. There’s no quest. It was Loki.” He paused, but Coulson just stared back at him. “Loki came to the tower. He said if I did what he told me, he’d change me back. If I didn’t, h-“

“He’d kill us all,” Coulson finished. “Yes, I know.”

Clint blinked. “What do you mean you know?”

Coulson gave him a look that he couldn’t quite decipher. “Well, the hero’s task is usually set either by whoever cursed them in the first place or by a wise being they go to for help. Since our visit to Doctor Strange was less than fruitful, Loki seemed likely.” The corner of his mouth twitched, and he added, “That, and Stark told me.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “Of course he did. Asshole.”

“Why? Because he was worried about you?” Coulson said, frowning. “Because he didn’t like you walking in a trap alone?”

Clint huffed and stood up, pacing along the short length of the bed. Every time he’d run through this conversation in his head, it had ended with Coulson storming out in anger or punching him or, worst of all, looking at him with nothing but hurt disappointment. Not once had Clint anticipated this calm, tense understanding.

“So why’d you go along with it?” he demanded. “If you knew it was a trap, why’d you come?”

Coulson’s eyes narrowed, and there, in that look, was the anger Clint was waiting for. “I want to give you the benefit of the doubt, here, and assume that you’re just being obtuse, rather than deliberately insulting.”

Clint stopped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

In a cold, even voice, Coulson replied, “For one thing, it’s uncharacteristically short-sighted of you to think you’re the only one who has a score to settle with Loki. For another…” He shook his head and sighed, rubbing roughly at his eyes.

Clint resumed pacing, his feet bare on the coarse motel carpet. “This is stupid.” He ran a hand through his hair. “God, this is fucking crazy. I never should have let you come with me.”

Coulson glanced up sharply, then looked back to the bag of chips still in his hands. “Fourteen.”

“What?”

“Fourteen,” he said again. “In the years we’ve worked together, that’s how many bullets you’ve taken for me. Fourteen.”

“What’s that got to…? What, you think you owe me?” Clint shook his head. “Sure, I’ve taken a few, but no way it’s that many. And you’ve taken plenty for me.”

“Six.” Coulson set the bag on the bed beside him and raised his eyes to Clint’s. “You remember Marakesh? We were caught out in the open. You pushed me down and took five in the back.”

There were five knotted scars on Clint’s back where those bullets had hit. Sometimes, in dry weather, he could feel the skin on them pulling. “Yeah, I remember.” He rolled his shoulders to shake off the sensation. “Christ. Why the fuck would you count something like that?”

“Because you won’t,” Coulson snapped. “Because you never do. Because, after everything that’s happened, you can still stand there and ask me _why_.”

Clint opened his mouth to answer, paused, and closed it. Coulson gave him a hard glare and looked away, shaking his head.

“You think everyone deserves loyalty except you.” Coulson scrubbed his hands over his face, like he was trying to wake himself up from a lingering nightmare. “And it’s not noble or selfless, it’s dense and offensive.”

Clint’s face heated. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” He sank onto the edge of the bed, keeping Coulson just in the corner of his eye. “You’ve always got my back. I know that. I just… don’t get it, I guess.”

“You don’t have to get it,” Coulson sighed. “You just have to let me be here.”

Clint turned and caught Coulson’s gaze. “You know Loki’s gonna kill us.”

Coulson raised an eyebrow, and Clint saw the barest flicker of a smile. “I sincerely hope that’s not plan A.”

“You really think I have a plan?”

“Oh god.” Coulson rolled his eyes skyward. “Loki’s going to kill us.”

Clint reached for the pile of junk food and grabbed a package of miniature donuts. “Hey, who knows. Maybe he’ll just change me back and fuck off to another galaxy.”

He and Coulson exchanged a look and burst out laughing.

***

There was enough room in the bed for them both to stretch out, but they slept back to back, anyway, drawn by the familiarity of each other’s closeness. Clint woke again in the middle of the night, roused not by his own dreams, but by Coulson’s.

He was jostled gently out of sleep, then snapped awake by an elbow in his side. The movements were small, tense twitches and jerks, and he could feel the vibration of murmurs and uneven breath.

“Phil?”

Clint sat up and squinted through the dark to see Coulson’s face, his brow furrowed and jaw tight, his hand clenching in the sheets. Carefully, Clint laid a hand on Coulson’s shoulder and measured his own breath so that his voice would come out soft.

“Phil, it’s okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.”

At Clint’s touch, Coulson shuddered hard and stilled. Clint ran his hand over Coulson’s arm in soothing strokes until, slowly, the tension began to ease.

“That’s it. You’re okay.”

He slipped his hand gently around to rest against Coulson’s throat, feeling as his pulse steadied and slowed. With a sigh, Clint dropped back to the pillow, his arm still draped across Coulson’s chest.

“You’re safe. I’ve got you,” he mumbled. As quickly as he’d woken, exhaustion crept back into Clint’s head, and he drifted peacefully downward. Coulson talked in his sleep, and Clint was lulled by the gentle vibrations, even if he couldn’t hear the words.

Late in the morning, he blinked awake with Coulson tangled in his arms, and something warm and strange pooled in his stomach. Some truth he’d been keeping from himself, Strange had said. If the truth in question was that Clint might not be as straight as he thought, it was officially heard, understood, and acknowledged.

And really, in the absurd tragicomedy that was Clint’s life, it just fucking figured that it took getting turned into a woman for him to realize he was in love with a gay man.

Coulson woke as Clint extracted himself, and, for a moment, his half-lidded eyes were soft and hazy with contentment. Then his gaze cleared, and he startled away, stammering apologies that Clint could read clearly on his expression.

Clint forced a grin and reached for his hearing aids. “Knew you were a cuddler, sir.”

Coulson coughed out a laugh. “Only because you’re afraid of the dark.”

“Fucking terrified,” Clint said, and now his smile was genuine. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

“Take it to my grave,” Coulson assured him. “Which I dearly hope doesn’t turn out to be Hudson Bay.”

“Yeah, copy that.”

Clint, for his part, would have preferred to stay in bed. He didn’t know what Loki wanted or what he would have to face before the day was over, but he knew, one way or another, the sun was going to set on a different world.


	4. In which the journey ends.

The wind off the water was wet and cold, and it stung Clint’s eyes as the rented boat raced up the narrow river and into the bay. It whistled in his hearing aids and lent a tense overture to the scene while the waves and shore rushed past around him.

He was dressed for battle, with his bow and quiver in their place and the sword, Gram, hanging at his side. The heavy pendant hung around his neck, bouncing over his heart with the boat’s motion, and the vial of serum was tucked safely in a pocket of his fitted thermals.

Coulson drove, maneuvering deftly around the chunks of ice that had lingered into the late spring, and there was nothing for Clint to do but sit and watch the tiny archipelago draw nearer on the horizon.

A hundred things he hadn’t done clattered in his mind, as if he’d just arrived at work only to realize that he’d left the coffee pot on or the door unlocked. The chess game with Steve he’d never found time to finish, the movie he’d borrowed from Sitwell and never returned, the $13 he owed Natasha for take-out last month, the basket of laundry he still needed to do because he was out of clean socks. There were the notes about the new net arrow design that he’d never given Stark and the comic books he’d promised to lend to Thor. There were books he’d bought and never opened, video games he’d started and never beaten, promises he had yet to keep.

He glanced back at Coulson, steady on the till and squinting against the sharp wind and still _there_ in spite of all the reasons not to be, and Clint thought of all the things he really should have known years ago, all the things he never thought to say.

They reached the islands just as the first touches of rose and gold began to streak the thinly-clouded sky. Coulson circled around the little cluster of land, not much more than a conglomeration of rocks and trees standing in strips on the icy water. He guided the boat carefully into the shallows, and they dragged it onto the small shelf of ice that remained around the island edges.

“As sites for epic show-downs go, I guess we could do worse,” Clint remarked.

Without the boat’s motor, a deep silence fell. Even the wilderness sounds of animals and birdsong were absent, leaving nothing but the quiet lapping of water and the rustle of wind in the trees. Clint nocked an arrow, and Coulson drew his gun, both of them tense and waiting.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah, thanks, Obi-wan.”

“I’m serious.” Coulson was looking between the water and the newly-green foliage, frowning. “Something about this doesn’t feel right.”

“We’re on an island in Canada, waiting for a psycho god to come and tell us how we’re gonna die,” Clint pointed out. “ _Nothing_ about this feels right.”

“Fair enough, but that’s not what I meant,” Coulson said. “It’s just that this is supposed to be the final confrontation, right?”

“Probably, yeah.”

“Does this feel like the end of any fairytale you’ve ever read?” Clint gave him a blank look, and Coulson went on, “There’s no momentum, no urgency. Besides, the hero almost always has to face the last threat alone.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. It feels to me like there’s still something else that has to happen.”

“Guess we shoulda brought a copy of _Beowulf_ for reference.” If Loki had any more complications to throw in the ring, Clint didn’t want to think about what they might be.

He stood back to back with Coulson, their weapons ready, watching all points as the sun sank slowly lower toward the vast water. After a moment of unnerving silence, Clint said quietly, “I’m glad I’m not. Alone for this, I mean.”

Clint caught the edge of movement as Coulson turned to glance over his shoulder. There was a pause, and Coulson answered, “As long as I have a say in it, you never will be. Alone, I mean.”

The warmth that Clint had felt that morning welled up and settled some of the chilling uncertainty churning in his stomach.

“Look, I, uh… I don’t know what’s gonna happen, and if we get through this, I might not… I mean I might still be Lady Hawkeye, at least for a while. So I’m not looking ahead or asking for anything, and even if I do get, y’know, turned back, I still wouldn’t ask. It’s just that…” He took a deep breath and didn’t look to see if Coulson was listening. “It’s just that I’ve been thinking different the last couple of days, and if I’m gonna die here then I want you to know that I think I might be kind of in love with you.”

There was a shuffle of footsteps on the ground, and Clint turned to see Coulson standing stock still and staring at him with an expression of disbelief. For a second, Coulson seemed to be struck speechless, then his jaw tightened, and he said sharply, “Oh, _fuck you_.”

Clint blinked, taken aback. “I don’t think we have time for that, sir.”

“No, we don’t,” Coulson snapped. “We don’t have time for anything, including a reasonable, adult conversation, which is why this kind of eleventh-hour battlefield confession is such overwrought, childish _bullshit_.” The few times Clint had seen Coulson truly angry, it had been a cold, seething rage. Now, he was just livid. 

“You dump this on me, thinking you’re about to die so there won’t be any consequences. But if Loki does kill you, then I’m left with guilt and regret for all the might-have-been romance crap. And if by some miracle we survive, then you have the option of saying that you were just afraid and you didn’t really mean it, or maybe you’ll say that you do mean it and I’ll be stuck wondering if you actually don’t and are just standing by your word. So I know you think you’re being honest and acting like the romantic hero, but you’re not. You’re acting like a coward, and I expect better of you.”

Coulson rubbed at his temples like the universe at large was giving him a headache, and Clint longed for the earth to open up under his feet and let him disappear from this moment.

“And I’m very happy that this experience has given you a new perspective and allowed you to learn something about yourself,” Coulson went on. “I am, truly. And it’s entirely understandable that you would transfer some of those new feelings onto me, because I’m here and you trust me and because you don’t risk anything by making me an object of hypothetical desire. So, while that’s sincerely flattering, it’s also grossly unfair, and I refuse to be reduced to the convenient focal point of your big gay awakening.”

Clint took a step back from the unexpected force of Coulson’s anger. “I’m sorry, I didn’t… But it’s not… I mean, I get that you don’t want… me. This. But you’re not _convenient_. I really do…”

“No. No you don’t get it. You don’t get any of it,” Coulson cut him off. “And maybe some of that is my fault, because I never said anything, because I never told you that I’ve been completely, hopelessly, insensibly in love with you for _years_. So I’m telling you now, because I want you to fully comprehend what a colossal jackass you are for having your personal revelation at this particular moment.”

“Wait. What?”

“Dear gods, you two are pathetic.”

They whirled, weapons raised, and trained their sights on Loki, standing serenely at the water’s edge.

“I’ve a mind to stitch your lips closed, just to stop that infernal bleating.”

Loki strolled forward, and Clint tracked him down the long line of the arrow, heart pounding. “Didn’t your momma tell you it’s rude to interrupt?”

“From what I overheard, I would say I’ve done you a favor, Agent Barton.” His tone was casual, his hands clasped behind him like he was happily surveying his domain. “You really shouldn’t attempt to express such complex emotions. I believe lust is rather the upper limit of your capacity.”

“Y’know, I’m starting to think you’re just hanging around to insult me.” It burned worse, somehow, to have Loki mocking him where Coulson could hear. “Just tell me what you want, so we can get this done and go home.”

The smile that curled across Loki’s thin mouth was the same one he wore in the worst of Clint’s nightmares. “And what do you expect will happen when your task is complete? That you’ll be restored to your body, with all things as they were, and nothing will remain of this enchantment but an ill memory and bad dreams?”

Clint’s blood ran cold. “I’m guessing that’s not the plan.”

“Planning has nothing to do with it,” Loki said, stalking steadily up the rock shore, his cold eyes fixed on Clint. “It’s the nature of magic to leave a mark, to linger. Once a body has been touched, the traces never truly leave.”

Loki didn’t move, didn’t look away from Clint, and the chilling smile never changed. At Clint’s side, Coulson gave a sudden jerk and gasped in pain.

“Son of a bitch.” He kept his gun trained on Loki with one hand and put the other to his chest, pressing over his heart.

Slowly, Clint lowered his bow and arrow. “Coulson?”

Coulson cried out, and Clint dropped the weapons and caught him as his knees buckled, sinking with him onto the rocky ground. “Phil? Come on, talk to me.” Glaring up at Loki, Clint growled, “What’s going on? What did you do to him?”

Loki made a sound of amusement. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

Clint fumbled at the zipper on Coulson’s jacket and yanked it down, pushing it aside to see the soft grey shirt and a spot of deep, dark red blossoming on his chest.

“I told you to come alone,” Loki said. “This is the cost of your disobedience.”

“No, no, no. Leave him alone. Let him go back. I’ll do whatever you want by myself, just let him go.”

“Clint…” Coulon’s fingers twisted in the collar of Clint’s shirt. He was shaking in Clint’s arms, his face deathly white and desperate. “Don’t. Don’t do this. Please.”

“Fuck. _Fuck_. Come on,” Clint pleaded. “Come on, you son of a bitch, just tell me what you want.”

Loki’s bloodless smile widened. “There is an ancient beast that dwells in these waters. All I require is its skin.”

“ _What?_ After all the…” Clint shook his head. He could feel Coulson’s breathing, harsh and ragged against his neck. “Fine. Whatever. I’ll do it. Now, _fix him_.”

“I can’t.” Loki shrugged, still smiling. “But if you hurry, I might keep him alive long enough for you to get him to a healer.”

Clint’s stomach dropped. “No. No, you have to… You can’t…” He looked back to Coulson, curled in close against his chest, and he knew that the decision was already made for him; it always had been. “Aw, fuck it.”

He pulled the vial from his pocket and tugged off the cap with his teeth, plunging the needle into the heavy muscle of Coulson’s thigh. Coulson gave a cry of shock and pain and fought to focus his eyes on Clint’s face.

“No, no. What did you do? What did you…? Why…?” His voice faded away, and his eyes fluttered closed as the serum went to work. If this worked, Clint decided, he’d send Banner a gift basket, even if he had to order it from the afterlife.

Loki stared down at him, the cold smile gone. “Well, that was foolish.”

Clint glared back. “You kinda forced my hand here, asshole.”

“Of the seven items you were given, how many remain?” Loki spat. “How can you accomplish your task if you insist on squandering what little power you have?”

“So do it yourself.” He checked Coulson’s pulse, weak but steady, and stifled a sigh of relief. “Can’t believe you’ve been fucking with me just ‘cause you needed a damn butcher.”

Loki scowled and turned, pacing impatiently along the edge of the water. “The monster’s hide offers certain benefits that can only be reaped if it is defeated by a mortal warrior. I don’t expect you to appreciate the distinctions such magic requires.”

“Yeah, _appreciate_ isn’t the word.” Carefully, Clint slipped Coulson’s arm around his shoulders and hauled him the few yards back to the waiting motorboat.

“What in the heavens are you doing?”

“Well I’m sure as fuck not leaving him lying in the dirt.”

There was an emergency kit in the front end of the boat that held, to Clint’s relief, a solar blanket and signal flares. He wrapped Coulson in the blanket and settled him gently in the bottom of the boat. With a running shove, he pushed the boat off of the shallow ice and out into the waters of the bay. When it was caught in the current around the islands, he aimed the flare out over the water and fired, sending a brilliant red flash arcing across the gathering dusk.

“You’re an even greater fool than I supposed,” Loki sneered.

Clint gathered his bow and fallen arrow from the ground and gave Loki a look that he hoped showed exactly how long-gone his patience was. “Just point me at your fucking monster.”

With a grand sweep, Loki gestured silently toward the trees and the center of the archipelago. Clint tossed off a salute and started walking.

***

The armor unfolded over him with a whisper of scales, sliding seamlessly beneath the strap of his quiver. He had to hand it to Stark; the man knew his tech.

As Clint moved deeper into the trees, the only sound was the rattle of wind through the branches and the relentless thump of his heart. The islands of the archipelago were narrow strips of land split by flows of icy water. As he hiked along the edge, looking for a place to cross, a shadow flickered in the dark water, and he stopped. The shadow passed again, and Clint drew Gram from its scabbard.

“Come on, Jabberwock. Let’s do this.”

The creature’s head rose up out of the water, swaying on a long, serpentine neck. Its sleek body followed, and Clint backpedaled as the thing swung around to watch him. The thing looked the way he imagined the Loch Ness monster might, like some primeval terror made to slip silently through ancient waters. It lowered its head so that the massive, depthless eyes were on a level with Clint’s, and it hissed, baring a mouthful of long teeth like clustered needles.

“That’s right, motherfucker,” Clint growled back. “I’m here for you.”

The great jaws snapped, and Clint swung. The blade caught the creature across its nose, and it shrieked, drawing back as it reevaluated the threat posed by this small, fragile thing. Grinning, his pulse pounding, Clint lunged.

Not fast enough. The monster lurched back and caught Clint across the chest, its claws striking sparks on the armor. Clint hit the ground and rolled to his feet, circling as the creature darted toward him.

“Shoulda practiced with the damn sword,” he muttered.

With a roar, the thing dove for his head, and the needle teeth closed around the blade. It wrenched the sword from Clint’s grip and flung it away. In an instant, Clint had two arrows nocked and drawn, looking for an opening.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he could have sworn he heard Loki laughing, but it was drowned out instantly by the memory of Coulson’s voice vibrating in his skin.

The monster reared up, and Clint fired. Each arrow struck home in a knee, and the answering roar made the rocks shake beneath his feet.

The man who had taught him the sword was long dead, but every lesson was alive and present in Clint’s blood as he scooped Gram from the ground at a run and whirled, bringing the blade in a clean arc across the monster’s long, graceful neck. It shrieked in agony and collapsed, floundering as it struggled to regain its feet.

Sword at the ready, Clint approached with caution, but the creature was down. The fight was over. He raised the sword and moved in for the killing stroke, looked down at the creature, and stopped.

In the great dark eye, Clint’s own reflection stared back at him, a distorted image that showed only a frantic fighter in silver armor. Slowly, he lowered the sword. The creature gave a low, wet cry, and Clint saw, not himself, but the animal, frightened and in pain. He staggered back, stunned.

“Oh, god.”

The creature blinked and cried out again, and the sound stabbed through Clint’s heart.

“Oh, god. Oh my god.” The dark eye followed him as he knelt beside the creature’s head. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I’m so sorry.”

He laid a hand gently on the massive head, beside the first cut Gram had made, and the creature let out a sharp keen, full of sorrow and suffering. Thick, black blood pooled on the ground, soaking into Clint’s boots and clothes.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, and it seemed like such a pitiful phrase when what he’d done was murder a creature that may well have been older than the island she lived on.

He could feel her eye on him, watching him, begging him for mercy, and he nodded. Standing, he raised the sword again and placed the point just behind the slope of her head. The blade was sharp enough that it didn’t need much force to plunge down through the tough skin and into the creature’s neck. He felt the pop as it severed the spinal column, and the creature gave one last bellow that shook the air and would rattle in Clint’s bones for the rest of his life.

With the sword still buried in the creature’s flesh, Clint leaned his head against the heavy pommel and didn’t try to stop the tears when they came.

“If I’d known you were going to make such a fuss, I would have found someone else.”

Loki’s voice was cool and dissonant in the post-battle stillness, and Clint’s head snapped up at his approach.

“Of course, if there had been _anyone_ else, I would have been much happier, all around.”

Clint swallowed down the tears and bile stinging in his throat and asked, “Why? Why did you make me do this?”

Loki rolled his eyes. “You and your incessant questions. It’s a wonder your captain hasn’t strangled you.”

“Just tell me why!” Clint pulled the sword loose, dripping blood, and advanced on Loki. “Why was it so important to kill this poor thing?”

“I told you…”

“Yeah, you need her skin, but for what?” Clint demanded. “What’s so special about it?”

Loki’s scowl morphed into an expression of smug triumph. “When properly vanquished, the monster’s hide can be made into an unbreachable vessel. Or, well, any sort of shape, really.”

With that, the last piece clicked into place in Clint’s head. “Armor,” he said. “You want it to make armor, so nothing can touch you.”

Loki inclined his head. “Look at you, clever child. And here I thought you were too dull to think of such things.”

“Dull. Sure. Right.” Wiping the blade clean, Clint returned Gram to its sheath and unslung his bow. “I’m dumb as dirt, but I do know one thing.” He pulled one arrow from his quiver and turned as he drew, aiming for the center of the creature’s mass. “You’re leaving empty-handed.”

He heard Loki breathe in sharply as he fired, and Clint got a little thrill knowing he’d manage to surprise the fuck out of an ancient Norse god. The arrow struck and exploded, sending pieces of gore flying and scorching what remained of the creature’s body. It was a worse end than she deserved, but Clint would be damned if he let her power get into Loki’s hands.

Loki grabbed Clint by the throat and lifted him off his feet, shouting, “You idiot mongrel! That monster was the last of its kind!”

“Good,” Clint gasped. “Means you can’t try this shit again.”

“Do you care so little for your friends’ lives that you would toss them away?” Loki snarled.

“Not gonna kill them. You can’t.” The edges of Clint’s vision began to grey and swim as he struggled to breathe. “Woulda done it already. You needed… needed me to get to them.”

Loki’s grip tightened. “Well, then I suppose you’re of no more use.”

With his free hand, he pulled an arrow from Clint’s quiver, and he held Clint’s eye as he thrust the arrow up beneath the bottom edge of the armor. Clint felt it punch through his stomach, a burning path of pain cutting into him. He tried to struggle and twist in Loki’s grasp, but the strength he had left was ebbing and pouring out of the puncture in his side. Loki gripped lower on the arrow’s shaft and plunged it in deeper until the sharp head pierced Clint’s heart.

Blackness closed in on Clint, and he felt everything from far away. He felt the blood pooling and dribbling from the corner of his mouth. He felt the razor edges of the arrow head sawing inside him. He felt the world tilt as Loki flung him backward through the air. He felt the impact of the icy water as he struck the surface and, slowly, began to sink.

The water closed over him as the last flickers of sunshine vanished below the horizon, and, in the darkness, Clint felt nothing.

***

The air smelled of dirt and sweat, the heavy musk of animals and the sweet whisper of cotton candy and popcorn. Bright spotlights saturated every corner, washing away the colors of the circus sets and empty seats.

Clint sat with his legs dangling over the side of the high platform, above the lights and the tight rope and the trapeze bars hanging motionless in the still air. He was himself, in jeans and a faded t-shirt, his purple sneakers framing his view of the ground below. The entire scene was surreal, like an over-exposed photo brought to life and painted into an empty space.

Not the smell, though. The smell was exactly right.

A woman sat beside him on the platform, and she was him from moments ago, her silver armor splattered with blood and the sword hanging at her side. She grinned, and he recognized his own smile.

“Uh. Hi?”

Her grin brightened. “Hi. It’s okay if you need to take a minute. This shit can be overwhelming.”

It was his voice, his words, himself and his memories, all of it so deliberately familiar. “You’re not me.”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “Nice catch. Not everybody picks up on that.”

“So who are you? What is this?”

“Same question, same answer. You know how a lot of cultures think that when you die you’ve gotta get ferried across a river or something to the land of the dead?” She gestured around at the memory circus. “This is the river.”

Clint followed her gaze over the scene, and it made a certain kind of sense. “So I’m… Am I dead?”

Her smile turned sad, and she replied gently, “You’re dying.”

“Oh.” That thought hurt both less and more than he would have expected, and he realized, with some surprise, that he wasn’t afraid. “Okay. Wow. That, uh… that sucks.”

She gave him a look of sympathy. “Doesn’t it? I mean, for what it’s worth, slaying an ancient beast and getting stabbed by an immortal alien god is a pretty badass way to kick the bucket.”

“What can I say? I got style.” Clint stared down at his hands, clasped between his knees where the denim had worn away into threadbare patches. “The thing that I killed…”

“She’s gone, and she doesn’t blame you,” not-him said kindly. “She’d have done the same thing to protect her family. Back when she had one.”

Clint nodded. It didn’t help his guilt, but he felt better knowing the creature was at peace. “What about Coulson?”

“Oh, he’s fine. Terrified and pissed off, but fine.” She paused, frowning, and went on, “Loki won’t go after the others, not for this. He broke your bargain first, and he’s gonna have to pay for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“The energies he tapped to do this to you, the transformation and the binding and everything…” She shook her head. “He’s fucking with shit he doesn’t understand.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t understand it, either.” He gestured at her and the bloodied armor. “Like this. I mean, Strange said the spell was supposed to reveal some kind of truth, and Loki said it had something to do with whatever I want most. But I’ve never had a hankering to be a lady, so I don’t get it.”

She raised an eyebrow, and Clint saw so much of himself in that expression, it was unnerving. “Come on. No guesses?”

Clint shrugged. “I thought it had to do with the whole maybe-kinda-gay thing. And I think that’s part of it, but it’s not the whole story.”

“Not quite,” she admitted, sighing. “Magic is… Well, it’s tricky. It’s subjective. Two people can get hit with the exact same spell, and it’ll do totally different things. It’s all about perceptions and subconscious associations and that kind of crap.”

“So…?”

“So, of the many damaged and dysfunctional people in your life, who are the most stable?” she asked. “Who’s got it together, emotionally?”

“Pepper,” he answered immediately. “Natasha, maybe. Phil. That physicist Thor hangs out with. Foster. I mean, I don’t know her that well, but she seems…” He trailed off. “Oh. Shit.”

“And there it is.”

“Oh, shit.” There was an empty space inside him that he ignored and denied, and now it ached as if the arrowhead was still lodged in his heart.

“I know you know that femininity doesn’t actually equal emotional competence, and that the problem’s in your brain, not your chromosomes.” She set a hand on his shoulder, and the simple, quiet comfort of that touch brought tears to Clint’s eyes. “The bottom line is that they’re the people you know who seem like they can really accept the good things they’re given, and that’s it. At the end of the day, all you really want is to be able to feel loved.”

It felt like a punch in his chest and like something being lifted off of him, all at the same time. _You think everyone deserves loyalty but you._ Coulson had known, had seen everything Clint was and wanted so much more clearly than Clint had ever seen himself.

“Oh.” He sniffed and wiped the damp from his eyes with the back of his hand. “Well. Guess it doesn’t matter, now.”

“Of course it matters. It always matters,” she said. “It might be late, and it might hurt more than it helps, but this shit always fucking matters.”

“I just mean that, y’know…” Clint waved at the over-bright circus rings below them. “It’s not like I’ll be going back to give everybody a hug.”

Not-him made a face. “Yeah, about that… You, uh, might wanna check your math.”

Clint started to shake his head, confused, but he stopped. Seven. He’d been given seven things to help him, and there was still one left.

“Natasha.”

Not-him spread her hands, smiling. “What she gave you is a one-time ticket back to the land of the living. If you want it.”

Clint frowned. “Why wouldn’t I want to go back?”

She sighed, and her smile softened. “Y’know how people talk about, like, heaven and the bright light and how death is all beautiful and shit? Well, it’s true.”

“No shit?”

“No shit,” she said. “Place you’re headed… Valhalla, Elysium, whatever you wanna call it… It’s fucking _great_. You’ve earned your rest, kid. Not a lot of people can say that”

_Rest_. It was a strange thought, to set his bow aside and let go of the things that drove him, to leave behind the nightmares and the everyday pain, to just… stop.

“If I go back…”

“If you go back, life goes on,” she replied simply. “You’ll live and die a hero, maybe save the world a few more times, certainly save a lot of lives.” She looked him in the eye. “You’re gonna lose a lot, and it’s gonna hurt. I wish I could tell you the good things will balance out the shit, in the end, but… I don’t know. Nobody knows.”

Clint huffed. “Sounds like a raw deal.”

“Same deal everybody gets.” She shrugged. “Life sucks, then you die. It’s what you do in the middle that counts.”

_Come home. Do what you have to, and come home._

He thought of Natasha’s laugh and her patient teasing, and he shook his head. “Paradise sounds pretty fucking tempting, but I don’t think I’m done, yet.”

She gave him a bright grin and took his hand. “That’s kinda what I thought you’d say.”

***

Clint did not want to open his eyes.

The scents of the circus lingered in his senses, overlaid with the smells of antiseptic and latex. He felt the pinch of an IV in his arm, and his head pounded behind his heavy lids, hazy with too much sleep, though not with the thick fog of drugs. There was no sound and no pressure on his ears, just the quiet vibrations in the air of hospital machines and another body close at hand.

He cracked his eyes, and, sure enough, Coulson sat beside the bed, staring vacantly away with a hand resting over his heart.

Clint cleared his throat, and Coulson’s attention snapped to him. The momentary shock on Coulson’s face vanished, shuttered away behind that ever-present expression of cautious distance. With a sigh, Clint crooked a finger over his ear, but Coulson gave an apologetic frown and shook his head, handing Clint a folded piece of lined paper, instead.

The page was covered in Coulson’s cramped scrawl and filled with sentences that had been crossed through, words scratched out and replaced, whole sections omitted and altered, and Clint glanced from the writing to Coulson with a raised eyebrow. Coulson just gestured back to the paper.

_The coast guard found me. They said there was a flare. I guess that was you,_ Clint read. The next line had been blacked over and replaced with, _Wouldn’t let them go anywhere until they found you, too. Found your bow and quiver in the water, then you. You were naked._

That sentence seemed to have originally ended with a question mark, and he realized that Coulson must have sat here, waiting, writing out the answers that he knew Clint would need and allowing no questions of his own. Clint skimmed over the rest of the page, gathering that they were in a small hospital and would both be fine and that a quinjet was inbound from New York, coming to take them home.

He handed the paper back to Coulson, nodding, and Coulson turned so that his face was square with Clint’s as he spoke.

How do you feel?

Clint touched his two fingertips together at his forehead to indicate his headache, then gave the signal for _okay_. Coulson’s relief was palpable, like a breath he’d been holding for days had finally been released. Clint smiled and raised his hands to sign a question.

He stopped.

He was okay. His head hurt, but not with the same throbbing tension that had plagued him for a week. Otherwise, he felt fine.

He looked down at himself and was met with the welcome sight of his own body. Putting his hands to his face, he felt the shape of his brow and jaw and maybe even a little stubble. He ran his palms over his chest and under the hospital blanket and actually groaned aloud when his hand closed over his dick.

“Oh thank fuck.”

He couldn’t hear the laugh, but he saw it light up Coulson’s face and felt it vibrate in his skin, stirring the warm feeling that curled sweet and safe inside him. He reached out and caught Coulson’s hand and held onto it.

“Thank you,” he said, because all the other things he wanted to say were too big to fit into that moment, and that was the most important part, anyway.

Coulson just shook his head and smiled.


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If anyone says "happily ever after", Phil is going to shoot them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just gonna leave this here. Feel free to ignore it.

It was to be expected, really. The awkward silence, the averted eyes, and the overwhelming urge to vomit and run away every time he saw Clint were among the many predictable reasons Phil had spent so many years keeping his mouth shut. It was to be expected, and it was no one’s fault. He only hoped it would pass with time, and he could just go back to being silently and hopelessly in love with his best friend.

Entirely _un_ expected, on the other hand, was the knock on his door after three days of clumsy evasion.

Clint stood in the hallway with a pizza box in one hand and a six pack of beer in the other, grinning. Once upon a… Well, before things had changed, anyway, it would have been a regular occurrence. Now, Phil had thought it would be a while before Clint came back to his doorstep, and his heart gave a small thud in his throat.

“Hi.”

“Um, hey.” Clint held up his offerings. “I thought about flowers and candy, but you’re allergic to roses, and I couldn’t find that weird Mexican chocolate you like. But the beer’s cold, and the pizza’s hot. So I’m hoping that’ll win me some points.”

Phil frowned. “What kind of points were you hoping to win?”

“The kind that’ll let me apologize with maybe a teeny hope of forgiveness?” Clint took a deep breath, like he needed something to steady himself, and went on, “See, I thought about it, and you were right. What I said, the way I said it… I shouldn’t have put that kind of pressure on you. And you had every reason to think I was full of shit and freaking out, and I just… You’re the best person I know, and I hate thinking that I made you feel like anything less than that. I thought telling you the truth was the right thing to do, but it wasn’t, not like that. It was selfish and careless and kinda chicken-shit, and I’m sorry. I’m… I can’t even say how sorry I am for doing that to you.”

Phil blinked silently back at him, stunned. As if any apology, however appreciated, was ever necessary; as if any bribes or begging was ever required to keep Clint in Phil’s favor. Clint was always quick to offer amends, but this gesture was unusually… sweet. 

He must have stood staring for too long, because Clint, shifting nervously on his feet, said, “Anyway, I was kinda hoping we could hang out, or something, but, if you’re gonna shut the door in my face, at least take the pizza.”

“Oh.” Phil looked down at the pizza and back to Clint’s hesitant smile. “Right. Of course. Come in.”

He’d long ago lost count of the number of meals they’d shared, the number of times Clint had fallen asleep on the couch beside him, the number of hours that had passed more easily for being in Clint’s company. It had been even longer since he’d held any hope of ever getting rid of the stutter in his heart or the persistent voice in his head that insisted it wasn’t enough.

Clint settled onto the couch and, out of deference to Phil’s oft-repeated plea, kicked off his boots before propping his feet up on the coffee table. Phil, at a loss and entirely without appetite, reached for a beer and took a seat in the corner of the couch, far enough away from Clint that he might be less tempted to touch.

The silence that fell wasn’t the comfortable quiet of days past, but an awkward, uncertain tension that Phil wasn’t sure how to break. He thought of telling Clint how he’d spent so long thinking he was making himself crazy by spending all his time with someone who could never want him back. He thought of saying that he’d realized he was counting bullets in Marakesh, or how terrified he was at the prospect of finally getting what he wanted only to have it taken away.

Around a bite of pizza, Clint asked, “You wanna watch a movie?”

Automatically, Phil answered, “Anything but _Star Wars_.”

Clint made a face. “Yeah, I think I can do without the hero’s journey for a while,” he said. “I dunno. It’s your turn to pick.”

With essentially the entire canon of global cinema to choose from, thanks to Stark’s comprehensive digital library, deciding on a movie could be a daunting task. For the sake of simplicity, Phil went for one of Clint’s favorite stand-bys. The moment John Wayne’s name appeared on the screen, Clint turned to him with a bright grin.

“You really do love me.”

Phil shrugged and forced down whatever emotion was trying to sneak onto his face. “You suffered through my James Bond marathon. I can indulge your cowboy fetish.”

“Does that mean you’re willing to role play?” Clint flashed him a sly grin. “Because I’ve got some ideas about you in chaps.”

A burst of heat shuddered low in Phil’s belly, and he shifted in his seat. “Clint, I…”

“I did my homework,” Clint said. “I mean, y’know, I did some research. Read some stuff. Apparently, it’s not that weird to grow up thinking you’re one way, and then realize maybe you’re not. So that’s good to know, I guess.”

On the screen, the opening credits rolled, but Phil’s attention was entirely on Clint. “No. As far as I know, it’s not unusual.”

Clint’s brow furrowed. “But you always knew?”

“That I was attracted to men? Yes, I always knew.”

Sitting back, Clint took another bite of pizza, clearly processing. After a moment, Phil figured that now was as good a time as any to get this conversation out of the way and said quietly, “I believe you.”

Clint looked up, and Phil’s eyes immediately fell to his hands, resting in his lap. “I believe that you meant it, that you really do… feel the way you said,” he went on. “But I need you to understand where I’m coming from, because I gave up on this a long time ago. I had to. Holding onto any kind of hope just…”

“Hurt too much,” Clint finished for him. Phil glanced up to find Clint watching him with a thoughtful expression. “You’re afraid I’m gonna change my mind.”

Phil sighed. “I’m afraid of the same thing I’ve always been afraid of.”

“Which is what?”

“Losing you. Losing… this.” He gestured between the two of them. “You’re my best friend, and that’s more important to me than… than anything else.”

Clint let out a long, slow breath. “Well, that’s good to hear.” Phil frowned, and he shook his head. “I don’t want anything to change. I still wanna do all the same shit we always do, I just, y’know, wanna do some other things, too.”

Phil raised an eyebrow. “Other things?”

“Like when we watch movies, I kinda want you to be… well, not way over there. And I like falling asleep with you, and I wanna do it on purpose sometimes, instead of just ‘cause we have to or because one of us passed out.” Clint rubbed nervously at the back of his neck, and Phil fought desperately to stop the warm, bright feeling welling up in his chest. “And, y’know, sex stuff, too.”

Phil swallowed. “Oh.”

“Anyway, I guess what I’m trying to say is I get why you’re worried, and I’m not gonna try and talk you into something you think might get you hurt. I don’t know what’s gonna happen or what kind of promises I can make,” he said plainly. “All I know for sure is that how I feel about you right now is the same as how I felt last week and the week before and the week before that. The only thing that’s changed is now I can see it a little more clearly.”

Fourteen bullets. A tangible tally to mark just a fraction of the times Clint had saved his life, had stood by him, had come through for him when all else failed, and it struck Phil how absurd it was that he would hesitate to trust Clint in this when he trusted him so absolutely in everything else. “You expect to feel the same way next week?” he asked.

Clint smiled. “And the week after that.”

Phil could have cried. Instead, he moved closer to the center of the couch to sit pressed against Clint’s side and took a pull on his beer to mask the tightness in his throat.

After a few minutes of watching the film in comfortable silence, Clint gave an exaggerated stretch and draped his arm lightly across Phil’s shoulders. Phil gave it one full second, then said, “I can’t believe you just did that.”

Not missing a beat, Clint replied, “Fuck you. I’m smooth as hell.”

Phil looked over out of the corner of his eye, and Clint did the same. They caught each other’s glance and laughed.

“Sure you are,” Phil said dryly, but he let himself lean in and rest his head on Clint’s shoulder.

It took another several minutes for Clint’s hand to curl around the top of Phil’s arm, fingers trailing softly along the hem of his shirt sleeve. A little while later, Phil shifted and resettled so that his other arm lay on top of Clint’s thigh. Then Clint reached over and threaded his fingers through Phil’s so their hands rested together on his knee.

As the movie went on, they moved into each other in small pieces, like a puzzle they couldn’t quite make out the shape of. Phil nearly dozed off, lulled by the warm comfort and the familiar rhythm of Clint’s breathing.

Suddenly, casually, Clint cleared his throat. “So, I, uh, watched some porn.”

Phil sat up, leaning away to give him a dubious look, and the tips of Clint’s ears turned pink.

“For, y’know. Reference.”

“Reference.”

“Yeah. I mean, I know how everything works, I just wanted a better idea of the mechanics and… stuff.” 

Clint shrugged helplessly, and Phil didn’t know whether to laugh or kiss him. It was all Phil could do to keep his expression neutral and ask, “Was it helpful?”

“Kinda?” Their fingers were still laced together, and Clint rubbed his thumb idly along the edge of Phil’s hand. “I dunno. It was hot, I guess.”

Phil absolutely would not let himself think too hard about Clint watching porn. “Listen, I don’t want you think that… I mean, I hope you don’t… I just want you to…” He paused and tried again, “I don’t want to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

“Yeah, thanks for the afterschool special,” Clint drawled. “This may come as a shock, but I have had sex before.”

Phil rolled his eyes. “And here I thought I was protecting your virtue.”

“Whatever. I know you’re gonna be a fucking gentleman, all gentle and shit…”

“I love how you say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“…but I wanted to have some idea what I was getting into.” Clint gave him a sheepish smile. “Didn’t wanna get down to it and start freaking out.”

“Given the circumstances, I think freaking out would be completely understandable,” Phil pointed out. “And if… If you do freak out or you don’t like something or just want to stop, you don’t have to…”

“I know,” Clint said quietly. “But I wanna try, anyway.”

He held Phil’s eye, and there was a long, expectant pause.

Phil blinked. “What, you mean now?”

Clint’s eyebrows rose. “Did you have other plans for the night?”

“No, but this conversation went from ‘maybe we should date’ to ‘let’s have sex now’ in the course of an hour and a half. I mean, we haven’t even…” He trailed off, and the pad of Clint’s thumb kept dragging slow lines over the slope of his hand.

He’d spent hours imagining what kissing Clint would be like, the taste and texture, the moment before and after, and nothing he’d dreamed of even came close to the feeling of seeing his own thought mirrored in Clint’s eyes, of Clint’s fingers sliding around the back of his neck, of losing all the air in his lungs to the hurricane force of one long kiss.

Clint’s mouth tasted like pizza and beer, and that was so much more appealing than it should have been. Years of waiting and wanting and wondering boiled over the brim of Phil’s control, and he arched into every point of contact he could reach with Clint’s body. The entire tower could have collapsed around them, and, at that moment, Phil wouldn’t have noticed a thing.

They broke apart, breathless, and all his senses were filled with Clint. The smell and closeness of him, the heat of his skin, the taste of him lingering on Phil’s lips; it was enough to drown in, and there was nothing keeping Phil afloat but the strength of Clint’s arms.

Clint blinked slowly, his eyes dark and soft, and said, “I want you to fuck me.”

Phil startled back, dizzy as all the blood in his head seemed to rush abruptly downward. “What?”

Clint pulled away, frowning in confusion. “Is that…? I mean, if you don’t want to…”

“No. Want. Yes.” Phil closed his eyes and tried to collect his fragmented thoughts. “I’d like that very much, yes, but I’d like to reiterate my previous question, _now?_ , with the additional caveat, _are you sure?_ ”

“Yes and yes,” Clint answered. He still had his fingers locked with Phil’s. “I want it, and I’m nervous, and I don’t know how to deal with that besides just jumping in.”

“We could work up to it. We don’t have to do everything in one night,” Phil said. “You can slow down. And maybe get information from a source other than porn.”

Clint huffed. “I didn’t _just_ watch porn. I said I read stuff, too.” Phil gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes. “I didn’t just read porn, either. I read, like, psychology papers and health service stuff.”

“In three days?”

“I was motivated.” Suddenly, he gave Phil a sharp smile. “But it would be really helpful if you could, y’know, _tell_ me what to expect. In detail.”

Phil narrowed his eyes. “You want me to tell you what’s going to happen when I fuck you.”

“So I’m prepared.” Clint managed to put on a straight face, but Phil could see the corners of his mouth twitching.

Sliding into his default demeanor of mild professionalism, Phil smiled pleasantly and said in a calm, cool voice, “Of course. You’re absolutely right.” Extracting himself from Clint’s arms, he stood and began clearing away the remains of their meal. “We’ll begin with some foreplay, obviously. Making out, fondling, nothing too extravagant. I’ll want you to be relaxed and at least partially hard before we get to penetration.”

From the corner of his eye, Phil saw Clint swallow and gave him another smile before carrying the leftover pizza and empty beer bottles into the kitchenette. As he walked, Phil said over his shoulder. “I’ll have you lie on your back and put a pillow under your hips. By this time, you’ll be naked, of course, as will I. With the liberal application of lubricant, I’ll then use my fingers to begin stretching your sphincter.”

Clint didn’t move except to turn his head, watching Phil over the back of the couch. Phil just kept smiling and tidying as he went on, “Since you’ve never had anal intercourse, we’ll have to go slowly. How quickly the preparation progresses will depend mostly on your emotional state and muscle elasticity, and, in addition to verbal communication, I should be able to judge an appropriate speed based on the state of your erection.”

It was impossible not to picture Clint in his bed, legs spread, ready to be ruined, and Phil had to take a deep, soothing breath. “Once I’m certain you’ll experience no additional discomfort, I’ll begin inserting my penis into your anal cavity. I’m not unusually large, so, barring any unforeseen complications, penetration should go pretty easily from that point. Then I can proceed to fuck you through the mattress until you come so hard you forget your own name.”

He came back around the couch and was met by the sight of Clint with a hand down the front of his unbuttoned jeans, unmoving. The heat that had been gathering in Phil’s cock sparked, and whatever intention he’d had of taking things slowly evaporated. In a slightly less professional voice, he asked, “Any questions?”

Clint looked up at him with a grin. “When can we start?”

Phil held out a hand, and Clint stood, melting into his arms with a sigh. If the first kiss had been a hurricane, the second was a flood, rising up through the soles of Phil’s feet, relentless and overwhelming and everything he had ever wanted on earth.

When Clint drew back, his grin had changed to something sweet and wondering, and he said softly, “Thank you.”

Phil wasn’t going to cry. He absolutely was not. Through the solid mass in his throat, he managed, “Well, don’t thank me yet.”

Clint shook his head. “I just meant for… for everything.”

Okay, maybe Phil was going to cry a little. “For everything I’ve ever given you,” he said, “you’ve given back twice as much.” Drawing them together as close as he could, he looked Clint in the eye. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Clint said, and he sounded so surprised and delighted that Phil had to kiss him again.

The third kiss was as long and warm as a summer Sunday, and it barely broke as Phil led Clint gently into the bedroom.


End file.
